


Totality is Fleeting

by PartlyCloudySkies



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Adventure, Cafe dates, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Shadow Monsters, Shadow Realm, Tags Are Hard, Weblena Week 2018, weblena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-02 02:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16296566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PartlyCloudySkies/pseuds/PartlyCloudySkies
Summary: No eclipse lasts a lifetime. Long after Magica is defeated, Lena will still have Webby.Weblena 2018. Seven stories for seven days.





	1. The Visitations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: Crush
> 
> Lena has a crush, and she deals with it by not dealing with it

Seven days ago, Lena was freed from Webby’s shadow. And the physician that Scrooge insisted examine her had declared her healthy and whole, a real person who did all the real person things. Breathing and junk.

Seven days ago, Lena moved back to the abandoned amphitheater. She was mildly pleased to see that it was still a shambles. It was a bit disappointing to know that her journal had been read, mortifying poetry exposed. But it was Webby. And she was very apologetic about it. Which was weird seeing as how it revealed Lena’s treachery so it was kind of a wash all things considered.

But Webby was like that. Considering how Lena had put herself to the task of deceiving Webby, Lena was grappling with the realization that there was still a lot to the girl she did not know. It was a dangerous thing, underestimating Webby. She had a way of… getting to a person.

She had a way of occupying a great deal of Lena’s thoughts even though she was on the far side of the city. Lena shook her head and paced.

There was a lot to think about. So much to deal with. A whirlwind of thoughts swarmed Lena, and that was when she was somewhere familiar. McDuck Manor was worse. All those people. People who were aware now that she was, well, a spy. And Webby…

Webby tried to make it easy on her, she really did. But it wasn’t going to happen. Lena had her very abrupt existence to deal with, her freedom from Magica, her future — so very suddenly _hers_.

And Webby. Dipping in and out of her thoughts, bombarding her from so many different directions.

“Lena?”

The place might have been ruined, but the amphitheater’s acoustics were still top notch. It really carried Lena’s voice when she screamed. Fine craftsmanship.

Once she felt her spirit rejoin her body, Lena spun around. And there was Webby. Wringing her hands, eyes alternating between Lena and the ground.

“Oh,” Lena said, her throat suddenly dry. She swallowed and tried again. “Hi. Hey. Hi. What’s up. Webz. Webby. Webz.”

“Hey, um. Just wanted to check on you.”

“Cool. Checked.”

“Ha ha. Yeah.” Webby wedged her feet into a crack in the rotting wood. She had the biggest hangdog look Lena had seen. And she was being hopelessly adora — 

_No. Bad._ Lena shook her head again.

“You okay?” Webby said.

“Cobweb,” Lena said, the lie painfully ready on her tongue. “This place is covered with them.”

“We have rooms at the mansion. Cobweb free.”

“I’m sure.”

Webby closed her eyes and sighed, long and exasperated and forlorn. “Lena… what did I do? Please just tell me.”

Lena looked at her. “What?”

There was force behind Webby’s words, as if the frustration welling up inside her was pushing them out. She counted off with the fingers of one hand as she spoke. “You left the mansion the moment I rescued you! You came back here to this… terrible place! What did I do?”

“It’s not —” Something froze over inside of Lena and with crystal clarity she saw the depths of her folly. She had just wanted time. What she mainly succeeded in was hurting her only friend. Keeping up the family tradition. “No, Webby. It’s not you! It could never be you!”

“Is it some kind of guilt thing? I’ve said over and over that what Magica made you do wasn’t your fault!” Webby waited for a response. When she didn’t receive any, she barreled on. “Would you just. Please. Tell me? Lena?”

And that last word, spoken with such desperate earnestness, rooted Lena in place. She could no more speak than she could move. “Webby, I… I…”

Her beak shut and nothing else came out.

Webby slumped, defeated. “This is my fault.”

“No.”

“It’s my fault because I thought this would go differently. I thought you’d… want to. I just assumed and that’s why I’m here. Like this.” The bitterness in her voice was so uncharacteristic. She scrubbed at her eyes with her arm and sniffed.

“Webby.” _It’s not your fault. I’m just running away because I am crushing on you like crazy and I can’t deal with that on top of everything else. I’m supposed to be the cool one but you’ve given so much to me and asked for so little that I don’t know how to handle myself around you and —_

“Oh, just… never mind!” Webby said. She turned and left the amphitheater.

_Ah, Lena, you messed this one up real bad._

It would have been so great, not to have to hear that kind of criticism now that there were no more witches lurking in her shadow. It could have been so great. A lot of things could have been great, if this were a better world than the one it was.

Lena sat against a pillar and stared at nothing in particular.

~~~

If this were another universe with another Webby who was not like Webby at all, that could have been the end of it. Lena would be left to her devices and her room which was a hole in the ground and her fate untethered from all those people who lived up on the hill in their mansion with their treasures and adventures.

But Webby, here and now, persevered.

And she had proxies.

A couple days after that encounter — days in which Lena did not leave her basement room — Lena was roused from troubled sleep by a smell.

A very _good_ smell. It drifted in through the drafty trap door and it filled her little room, which smelled like mildew and silverfish most of the time. 

She pushed away the damp blanket and found some clothes to drag herself into. Even disregarding the smell outside she was pushing the limits of how long she could survive down there. Astronauts breaking records for amount of time spent in orbit would shake in their astroboots in the face of staying in this terrible place for more than a day.

Lena held her hand up to shield her eyes against the morning sun when she lifted up the hatch and stepped out into the world.

“Goooood morning!” the voice was far too chipper for this kind of hour.

Lena’s eyes adjusted. She peered out between her fingers. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Huey sat on a log — where that log came from in this city Lena could not hazard to guess — in front of a campfire. A tripod grill was erected over the fire and a cast iron pan hung over the flames. Fried egg and sausages shone greasily in the sun.

“Oh, just starting the day right!” Huey said. “A proper breakfast at the crack of dawn. Junior Woodchuck T —”

“If you quote from that book once, I’m going to make it _your_ breakfast, twerp.”

“Goodness. It’s easy to see you haven’t had a good night’s rest. No imagination behind your insults at all.”

“I’m going to cook it first. Fried nerdbook, sunny side up.” As Lena woke up she became more aware of the world around her. Namely several crates at Huey’s back, one stacked on top of two. “What are those?”

“These?” Huey jerked a thumb back at the stuff behind him. “Well, we’ve got provisions. Clean linens, clean clothes, clean water, food that keeps.” He left his pan on the grill and turned, flipping the lid off one box and rummaging through its contents. He held up one small container, looked at it, then looked at Lena uncertainly. “Pancakes?” he said.

Lena grumbled, climbed all the way out of her room and snatched the thing out of Huey’s hand. She looked at the label.

“These are English muffins.”

Huey rubbed the back of his neck. “Mrs. Beakley asked me to call them pancakes when I showed you. It makes me very uncomfortable to misidentify food but I thought it might be a cultural thing?”

Lena rolled her eyes. “It’s… an inside joke.”

“Oh. Okay. Ha ha.”

“What is all this?” Lena put her hands on her hips and stared Huey down.

“I thought I just said.”

“ _Why_ is all this?” 

Huey’s expression seemed to suggest that question was even more confounding than the last. “Just… essentials. Webby’s been putting it together. With my expert help as an organizational and logistical consultant, of course.”

“Webby does remote island survivalist training. Why would she need your help?”

“Okay, _fine_ but does remote island survivalist training teach you to color coordinate your first-aid kits?” Huey brought out a white tin container and flipped it open. “See? Aubergine bandages for burns, chartreuse for lacerations and turquoise for —”

“Not really in the mood to accept charity.” Ignoring her own stomach as she said this was difficult. People said you can’t survive off principle alone, but maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough?

“Come on. Just take it,” said Huey.

“No.”

“At least eat breakfast.”

“No.”

“Is there any reason in particular you’re being Scrooge-levels of stubborn or what?” Huey said, his voice raised in frustration.

Normally it would be a nice diversion, winding up the little nerd. But Lena had not been sleeping well, had not yet come across a hot meal, and was, overall, not feeling it.

She took a fork from a set plate and stabbed a sausage.

“I left the mansion because I needed to be _alone_.”

“You can be alone in the mansion. Seriously, there’s like eight people there and it can fit so many more. I invited my troop over once and we lost three kids. For multiple days.”

Lena placed the sausage back on the pan, hunger forgotten. She pressed her fingers against her eyes until she felt the ache of pressure on her skull. She really didn’t feel like explaining herself to one of the triplets, but this was going nowhere.

“Duey, I —”

“Huey,” said Huey.

“Louie.”

“No, I just said —”

“I. Don’t. _Care_. For a moment, pretend you are me.”

“So I have weird taste in music, think I’m better than other people for reasons that aren’t very evident, worry my friends needlessly, possess middling talent in poetry and abuse poor innocent books that have done me no harm?”

Lena opened her mouth, thought better of what she was about to say, and changed her mind. “I have never been alone. Literally from the moment that I was created. Are we aware of this?” She spoke through gritted teeth.

“I guess.”

“And now that I am. Alone. I would like to give it a try. Expand my horizons.”

“By… having less people on the horizon.”

“The more people are in the way the less horizon I can see, obviously.”

Huey paused in thought, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “So you’re just trying this out?”

“Life is about trying things out.” While Huey was puzzling that one out, Lena stretched, then turned towards the city. There were ways to get an adequate meal in Duckburg without relying on Scrooge. She’d survived for 15 years that way. “I’m leaving now, I need to get some air.”

“You’re coming back though, right? To the mansion? Eventually?” Huey called out. “Can I tell Webby that?”

“Bye! Take your stuff with you too!”

“It took me all morning to get it down here!”

“Better get started,” Lena said. Then she turned a corner and was out of sight.

Lena came back later that evening. The campfire had been cleared away, but the boxes were still there. She looked at them for a while. Then, having come to a decision, reached in and pulled out the English muffins. She descended into her hidden room, a muffin already held in her beak.

~~~

It was the next day when Dewey showed up. Lena had been slowly transferring the contents of the boxes to her room over the course of the days and on one trip up and out of her room there he was, standing on top of the stack like some kind of conquistador.

“Alright, we’re going back to the mansion,” he said.

“I’m not stopping you,” said Lena.

“No. Us. Both. Package deal. I’m not leaving until you’re leaving. This is how we are Dewey-ing it.”

“Wow, no. No to everything you just said. No to every word of that.”

“Says who?”

“Me,” said Lena.

“On what authority?” Dewey balled his hands into fists and rested them on his hips.

“I’m bigger than you, I can kick your butt, also I’m magic.” Lena made a hand gesture and Dewey hovered away from his perch, ensconced in the mystical arts. She gestured again and he was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground.

“Come on!” he said. “That’s not fair!”

Lena returned to sifting through the boxes. “Cry me a river,” she said, her voice muffled as she dove in. “Just do it somewhere I can’t see you.”

“Why would you not want to live in McDuck Manor? It’s literally wall to wall craziness! Yesterday I fought the mothman! The. Mothman! And let me tell you, I am going to have _so many_ nightmares about his face.”

“Really selling me on this. Danger and stuff.”

“Like it’s not dangerous living here,” said Dewey. “I asked Huey and he gave me a list of code violations this place has that’s very, very long. You know they built this back when they used asbestos for insulation?”

“Hah! I wish this place was insulated!” Lena regretted saying that immediately, if only because she knew Dewey would relay that to Webby and Webby would worry more.

“ — And I was like, ‘Huey do you even know who you’re talking to? I stopped listening the moment you brought up building codes from the 60s!’ Ha ha ha!” Dewey laughed and slapped his knee. Then he looked at Lena. “Uh, I’m sorry, were you saying something?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Well, listen. You gotta come back. Webby is having a hard freak out.” 

Lena’s head swiveled and her eyes were on him in an instant. “What do you mean by freak out?”

“I think it’s pretty self-exclamatory.”

“Explanatory.”

“Whatever. She’s not happy, Lena. Not happy at all. Remember that mothman fight? It was great. Did I mention his face? Anyway, Webby was there and she barely fought him at all. Like, I think she managed one roundhouse kick? But having seen her do a few of those I have to say: this one lacked conviction. She didn’t even take part in our victory dance!”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “You have a victory dance?”

“Oh we definitely do. Anyway, the thing is, Webby’s just totally checked out since you left and I can’t be having that. She’s basically half our muscle when we go out on an adventure.”

“More like 90%”

“Please. I mean, 70% at best.”

“I’ve seen you throw a punch. I’m not impressed.”

“It’s not —”

“How… how bad off is she?” It felt brazen to ask. Yes, Lena knew that Webby had been upset at the time, but even now? Still?

_You lie so easily you even lie to yourself._

Lena pushed the thought away.

“I mean, she manages to stay focused well enough when we’re out adventuring,” Dewey said. “Honestly it’s coming back home when she really gets all down in the dumps. So,” Dewey clapped his hands. “Let’s get back over there. I need my team at a 100% if we’re going to conquer that vast, unknown thing we know as: the world.”

“No.”

“Aren’t you two friends?”

Lena shot a glare at him that kept any further words sealed in his mouth. His presence was not helping. “Good visit,” she said. “Let’s not make a habit out of it.” She waved her hand.

Dewey was lifted from the ground and was rapidly escorted in an aura of magic out of the amphitheater.

“You are really messing with our team dynamics right now!” Dewey cried as she whisked him away.

When she determined a reasonable amount of time had passed, she returned to the boxes. Only then did she find she no longer had the energy to deal with them. Lena lay down on the amphitheater floor and stared up at the blue sky.

~~~

The Threefold Rule was a thing Lena had seen in action throughout her life, so Louie’s visit would be as inevitable as she was sure she’d find it exhausting.

The day after Dewey’s visit she sprang out of her room onto the stage, eager just to get it over with.

No one.

Which was… good. Good. This was good.

Lena went about her day, never leaving the amphitheater and looking over her shoulder frequently.

The next day, for sure. And Lena was resolved to come out swinging.

She slammed the trap door back. “Okay, listen up! If you think I’m—”

A flock of seagulls scattered from where they had been resting, and no one else was there. Lena watched the birds flap away and she sighed.

The next day. This was obvious. The third day for the third triplet. But rather than make a scene she resolved to walk out composed and totally on top of things. Because that was what she definitely was. Composed and on top of things. She stepped out onto the stage, and was greeted with the same sight. The same morning. The proscenium arch, framing the prop moon and the prop stars. The flooded orchestra pit. The vacant concentric rows of audience seats. The graffiti. No one.

 _Whatever_.

Lena waited for a while, then she returned to her room and came back with a notebook in one hand and a pencil dangling from her beak. She leaned up against the arch, keeping to the shade. She closed her eyes and took the pencil in one hand, twirling it idly between her fingers. The waves crashed and receded and pushed the water gently up against the side of the stage in a rhythm that Lena subconsciously nodded to. She opened her notebook and put pencil to paper.

_Lavender lightning in a bottle/_  
_A blur of force streaking through battle/_  
_Taking on foes no other would dare/_  
_Not a feather ruffled in her bob cut hair_

Lena chewed on the eraser tip of her pencil. Rhyming couplets were a bit beneath her and the imagery was... kind of _eh_. This was an off day. She read the verse out loud experimentally, frowning. Then she read it aloud again, to hear it over the waves. She counted out the syllables.

“Not your best work, darling," she said, speaking with the dripping sarcasm Magica always used when she eavesdropped on Lena’s poetry.

“Wow, you creative types really are your own worst critics. I thought it was good.”

Lena hopped up onto her feet in an instant, whirling around at the voice and, at the same time, tearing the page out of her notebook and ripping it in half. It was a practiced motion, from when Magica was around.

Louie stood on the opposite end of the sunken orchestra pit. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his hoodie and he stood relaxed with a dispassionate expression. He raised one eyebrow. “You, uh, tore up your little poem there.”

Lena tucked her book and pencil under her sweater. “I wasn’t a fan of the rhyme scheme.”

“Harsh.”

“What are you doing here?”

Louie rocked back and forth on his feet and cast a disinterested look all around the amphitheater. “Oh, you know, Webby’s been climbing the walls worried about you for the past… what’s it been? Almost two weeks now? I dunno. You should see her, she’s convinced you don’t want to talk to her again but she just can’t seem to let you go, you know? So the others were like ‘let us go check on her for you’ and it was almost sad how quick she agreed to that.”

Lena had to consciously tell herself to uncurl her fingers from the fists.

“And so Webby hits on this idea of a care package for you,” Louie continued. “Only this is Webby so ‘care package’ becomes ‘care supply convoy’ and Huey has to negotiate her down to three crates of stuff. Listen, I don’t know how he managed to get those down here. I sure didn’t help. Probably Junior Woodchuck’d himself a pack mule made out of — I don’t know — dead leaves and some thread. So he does that and comes back all cranky saying how you want to be left alone and you can’t tell us apart. Which is a complete lie.”

“Which one?”

“Anyway, Dewey decides to go next because Webby’s still upset. Bless his heart, he has no idea what to do and figures he’ll just shout at you until you come with him. Did he tell you about the mothman?”

“Yes.”

Louie rolled his eyes. “He still hasn’t shut up about it.”

“Is its face as bad as he said?”

“Definitely not getting on my top 5 list, as far as faces go, yeah. Anyway, I’m getting off track. So Dewey comes back. He’s mad. Says you used your dark crafts against him, ensorcelling him.”

“Ensorcelling?”

“His words,” Louie said with a slow shrug. “So now here I am. The only triplet who didn’t volunteer for this whole… thing you’ve got going on with Webby and now everybody’s looking at me! Me! What did I do to deserve this? So the day after Dewey, I tell them I’ll go. Except I spent all day at Funso’s. I come back and they’re all mad?”

“Weird,” Lena said flatly.

“Yeah! Real weird. I won a plush gorilla twice my size from playing skee-ball. Are they grateful? No. So the next day they get me to go find you and I say that I will right after I finish watching Ottoman Empire.”

“Which was having an all-day marathon,” finished Lena, who was starting to see where this was going.

Louie pointed a finger at her, then tapped the side of his head with the same finger. “That’s right! I mean, cut a guy some slack, you know? Very educational, that show. I always said that we should show an appreciation for craftsmanship in this age of ever increasing automation.”

“I’m sure.”

“So anyway, fast-forward to today and I wake up to find that a certain pair of brothers knew where I kept my money stash. Well, two money stashes and a separate stash for possibly cursed jewels. Also, they had gained access to Uncle Scrooge’s on-site blacksmith’s workshop. Oh, _also_ also, I get a note saying that if I don’t come down here today, they’re going to melt everything down and pour the molten gold on my snack stash!”

“Wow,” said Lena.

“I know!”

“For someone who thinks he’s so clever, you are like the most blackmail-able person I know.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Lena.”

“Okay, great. You’re here now. And you saw me. You can go back. You did your duty. Congratulations.” Lena waved Louie off.

“That is tempting, it really is. And it’s all the same to me whether you stay here or you come live with us. I mean, I don’t get why you would stay here. I guess it’s okay if you’re into, I don’t know, breathing in mold spores.”

“Hey! I get by just fine! I don’t need Scrooge taking pity on me!”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Do you know what he said to me when we were Magica’s prisoners? He said that if I helped him escape, he’d make a place for me in his family!”

“Okay, sure.”

“That’s… how is that any different from Magica?” Lena said. “They both just wanted something from me and dangled a promise in front of my face to get it!”

“Hmmm.” Louie said.

In truth, Lena was not sure where she was going with this. But maybe if she sounded impassioned enough then Louie would _go away_.

“You know, I think I get it,” said Louie.

Lena blinked. “You do?”

“No!” Louie threw his arms up in consternation. “No I don’t! Scrooge has a palatial estate with televisions as broad as the side of a barn and endless supplies of Pep and you don’t want to live there? You and me? We are like totally alien to each other!”

He let out a breath and composed himself. “ _But_ I do get not wanting to just go along with what everyone else says. I mean. I have siblings. And they’re always going ‘Louie, don’t do this,’ ‘Louie, don’t do that,’ so… yeah. Just because someone’s holding a door open for you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to walk through it.”

Lena relaxed slightly. “Y… yeah.”

“But I gotta ask, does the reason you’re not coming back have anything to do with the fact you’re writing poetry about Webby?”

And instantly, she was wound back up like a spring. She jabbed her finger towards Louie. “You speak a word of that to anyone and I’m probably gonna hurt you, dude.”

“Eh,” said Louie. He resumed rocking on his feet. “So. Listen. I’m going back now and when I do, I’m going to tell Webby to come here tomorrow and talk to you.”

“What? But —”

“And if you’ve got any good sense whatsoever, you’re going to talk to her. Because this thing here? It can’t last. I _cannot_ abide walking all over town because Webby’s bouncing off the walls and Huey and Dewey are threatening my stuff. I _love_ my stuff. Okay?”

Lena slumped against the arch and slid down to the ground. “I don’t know what to say to her.” She tilted her head back and cast her eyes skyward.

Louie made a noncommittal sound. “Try the truth this time? I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it’s gotten to that point. We have sunk that low.”

Lena barely registered when Louie left. She felt wrung out and it wasn’t even noon. She felt the weight of paper and pencil under her sweater and it was kind of comforting.

This can’t be worse than being a pawn of a shadow witch. That was a thought Lena tried out to comfort herself and gain some perspective.

It wasn’t very helpful.

~~~

_Webby, I left because I am hopelessly_

_~~in love~~_  
_~~attracted~~_  
_~~in like???~~_  
_~~fond (FOND REALLY???)~~_  
_~~why hasn’t the death meteor found me yet~~_

Dropping the pencil from her hand, Lena resolved that this was a page she was going to wrap around a rock and drop into the bay. It was later in the day, the sun was low and cast long shadows across the amphitheater. The moon hung like a sickle blade in the purpling sky, poised to reap the amber yellow light of the evening sun.

Distractedly, Lena reached for her pencil again. That was a decent turn of phrase that deserved to be written down before she forgot it.

Her hand landed on a foot.

Lena looked up and there was —

“Webby!” Lena reeled back and clutched the notebook to her chest. “You! You… I thought you’d be here tomorrow!”

Webby wobbled on her feet in a way that alarmed Lena. 

“I… was… that was the plan,” said Webby. “But I figured I can just walk right over here. Anytime. That… it felt like I could do that now.”

Looking up at her, Lena didn’t bother to hide the crack in her voice. “You could have done that any time.”

“Would you have appreciated it?” The accusation in Webby’s voice made Lena wince, but she figured she had deserved that.

“Please sit down with me?” said Lena.

The words slipped beneath the layer of ice in Webby’s eyes and her expression softened. She settled next to Lena, keeping a distance between them that made Lena ache. The way Webby expressed herself physically was a revelation to someone whose only companion had been a malevolent shadow.

She had to earn back that closeness. So.

Honesty. Basic facts. Incontrovertible stuff that the two can agree on. Create a shared space where dialog can grow. First principles.

“I’ve been avoiding you,” said Lena.

“I know,” said Webby.

“I want to… not. I want to not avoid you.”

“Okay,” said Webby in a too-small voice.

“I want to…”

_~~be best friends forever~~_  
_~~date you~~_  
_~~grow old with you and live together in a lighthouse overlooking the crashing seas and the tempestuous storm clouds of a cold Northeastern shore and we keep each other warm and we smile at each other and we hold each other up~~_

The upswell of emotions in Lena felt as if they were clogging her words and stopping her voice. It was all so much, this thing she felt. And she wanted so much and it felt so wrong to ask for any of it. But it all boiled down to a single point. Lena wanted to be by Webby’s side. When all was said and done, that was what it came down to.

First principle.

“I want to want,” said Lena.

Webby tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Lena gestured with her hands as she spoke as if she were reaching towards some ineffable thing in the far distance. “There’s so much of myself that I still have to figure out. What kind of person I am. What kind of life I’m going to have. And there are so many blank spaces where something should be and… it’s overwhelming to think about. It’s _scary_. I am legitimately scared.”

Lena let out a long breath. It felt like she could just exhale forever until everything that was inside of her was outside and Webby could just see for herself all the bits of Lena that Lena was keeping bottled up. That sounded nice. Easier than putting it all into words, but words were all she had.

“However many question marks I’ve got hanging over my head, the one thing I know is that I want to be next to you. Always. And I don’t know if that’s something you’d, uh, want or something. You shouldn’t feel like you have to put up with me just because I was hitching a ride in your shadow and maybe living at the Manor would really screw things up and I don’t — uh… hi?”

While Lena was talking Webby had been inching closer, closing the gap and by the time Lena had noticed Webby was leaning on her shoulder and wrapping her arms around Lena’s arm.

“Why couldn’t you have said this all earlier?” The entire time Webby had been holding herself with the tension of a coiled spring. Lena was too. Now she felt it all unwind from both of them as Webby pressed close.

“I’m not super great at saying my feelings and junk,” Lena said.

“You beautiful idiot.”

“No arguments there,” said Lena and it felt good to feel Webby shudder with laughter. “I’m completely ruining my cool aloof teen image here.”

“Is it worth holding on to?”

“No.”

“Mhm,” said Webby. Then she separated herself from Lena and turned to look at her. “Move into McDuck Manor. With me. Us. All of us. I want to be next to you too. Go on adventures with us. There’s no better way to find out who you are.”

“I heard about the mothman.”

“He was cool.”

“Did Dewey really try to get you to do a victory dance?”

“He always tries that with everyone. Usually doesn’t work.”

“As long as it’s not mandatory, because that’s not me.”

“You never know until you’ve tried,” Webby said with a smile.

They sat together and the world was still. Water lapped against the edges of the stage and the twilight sky deepened and the sounds around them were captured by the amphitheater’s acoustics and magnified and it was easy to imagine they were the only two people for miles around, in a tiny world of their own. Lena would actually miss this place, despite all the reasons why she shouldn’t.

“It’s getting dark. Should we head… uh… home? Should we head home soon?” Lena said, uncertain of the word but trying it all the same. You never know until you try.

Webby lay her head down on Lena’s shoulder again. “In a bit.”

“Won’t your Granny be upset if we’re out this late?”

“Since when do you care what Granny thinks?

“Since I’m going to be sharing a roof with her? She’s going to go on and on about how I’m putting you at risk and junk.”

“You think there’s anything in this town that can pose any kind of threat to the two of us together?”

“Hm. No way,” Lena said after some consideration.

“That’s right. We’re going to be unstoppable.”

Lena twisted her arm that was wrapped between Webby’s two arms until she could clasp Webby’s hand. They held onto each other as night fell and the stars and moon twinkled overhead, mirrored in the bay, mirrored in the props hanging from the stage. Mirrored in Lena’s eyes as she looked up at them.

“Looking forward to it,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw ur a cool teen living in a spooky theater but when you get 3 visitations it's from annoying boys and not spirits with, like, fire skulls or tragic murderpasts


	2. The Sundae Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: Adventure
> 
> Lena makes a new rule.

“Okay,” said Dewey, “I’ll go again. I spy with my little eye something… that begins with the letter ‘s’.”

“Snake!” said Webby.

“Nope.”

“Stalactites,” said Huey.

“Nope.”

“Centipedes,” said Louie.

“Nope and not an ‘s’ word,” Dewey waited. Then he looked to his side. “You, uh, gonna guess a word there? Lena?”

“Hm? Oh. Skulls.”

“Nope. Webby?”

“Spectral snakes!”

“What? No — where do you even _see_ that?”

“There. Behind that tapestry of a demon? The one with the eyes and the fire?” Webby pointed, arm between the cage bars. Dewey looked on.

“Oh that is _messed_ up. But no.”

“Stalagmites,” said Huey.

“Ugh. No. Louie?”

“A cell,” Louie said, rapping his knuckles against the bars.

“Okay, you are doing that on purpose Louie! Disqualified! Lena?”

“Sadness.”

“Nope. Everyone give up?”

There were vague nods of assent and a few apathetic groans. Dewey stood up and put his hands on his hips, triumphant. The cage swayed sickeningly with his movements, the links of chain that held it up groaned against each other.

“I win again!” he said. “The word was ‘skeletons’!” He gestured at the not inconsiderable pile of said skeletons, below their suspended cage.

“That’s bogus,” said Lena. “I said skulls.”

“Skulls are not skeletons. They’re just _part_ of a skeleton. I’m talking about the whole shebang.”

Lena slumped against the cage bars and sighed. “I wish I was a skeleton right now.”

This was Lena’s first adventure with this family. _As_ a member of this family.

It wasn’t going so hot.

~~~

Several hours later they returned to the _Sun Chaser_ , which Launchpad had lodged perfectly into the narrow gully which overshadowed the entrance to the catacombs dedicated to some forgotten god they had been looting. If Lena hadn’t been there for the initial crash, she would have attributed the plane’s position to some mad genius and expert pilot. But no expert pilot screams that much while approaching their landing, she was quite sure of that. This was all dumb luck. Random chance. Rolling the dice and coming up a winner each impossible time.

The triplets, Webby, and Lena climbed out of the pit and into the sun. Donald herded them from behind. As Lena looked up she saw Scrooge talking with Launchpad, the two standing tilted side of the plane before vanishing inside. While the kids had been moldering in some freaky ancient trap, Scrooge had looted the catacomb’s mystical power source and freed them. All in all, they hadn’t contributed a single thing to this little expedition other than getting captured and being rescued.

In a ragged, tired line, they scaled a narrow blade’s edge pass that got them level to the plane’s tilted gangway.

Launchpad popped out of the hatch and gestured towards them. “Ladies and gentlemen I’d like to thank you for flying Launchpad Air. I just want to update you on the status of our in-flight entertainment. It turns out the artifact Mr. McDuck took from that underground place really messes with any kind of magnetic instrument, so there won’t be any! Fortunately the only magnetic instruments on this plane are the non-essential kind, so we’re all set to fly!”

“That’s the first good news we’ve gotten all day,” said Louie. “If I had to sit through another 12 hours of poorly recorded shareholder conference calls from 20 years ago, I was going to go back down into the cage.” 

Lena was inclined to agree. At first the mix-up was funny when they discovered Launchpad had raided some old McDuck Enterprise archive instead of getting the classic Darkwing episodes he loved so much, but when they actually started playing the tapes out of sheer boredom, the situation got dire fast.

They filed past him and into the plane where they navigated the awkward angle of the deck and tumbled into their seats. Lena scooted over automatically, Webby already hefting herself up to sit alongside her. Lena felt like rocks were tumbling around in her skull cavity and earnestly believed she could close her eyes and not open them for ten years.

“You okay?” Webby said. Dear Webby. Bags under her eyes, hair disheveled and probably in need of a host of inoculations after the near-death brush with a ravenous flesh-eating locust swarm, but she wanted to know if Lena was okay. And… honestly Lena was probably no better off. None of them were. Lena managed a small smile.

“I’m good Webby. Just need some rest.”

Webby nodded. She put her best foot forward but Lena could see how the stress of the last few hours had worn on her. Lena could relate. She either needed sleep or a brick to cave her skull in, and right now it was hard to say which would be preferable.

Across the plane, Lena heard Dewey’s voice. Low and testy and she picked out enough words to know they were directed at her.

Something inside Lena ticked over. She grabbed the armrests and hoisted herself into an upright position. “Didn’t quite catch what you said, blue boy. You wanna run that by me again?”

Dewey, as visibly fatigued as the rest of them, worked up the energy to feign shock. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were in a mood to _listen_ for once. I was just saying how you could have gotten all the rest you wanted after getting us dropped into a cage in the middle of an ossuary! I had to spend an entire adventure in bone prison because of you!”

“ _I_ did that? You were the one who set off the trap!”

Next to Dewey, Huey raised a single finger and goodness if Lena had laser eyes she would have blasted that finger clean off. At that moment nothing could set her off more than seeing Huey with that pose that meant he was about to start a sentence with the word _technically_. 

“Technically,” Huey said, “Lena did use magic in a tomb that we were specifically told reacts adversely to the presence of magic and the moment she did we were all banished into a magic-proof, lockpick-proof, tamper-proof prison surrounded by dead people.”

“Ha!” said Dewey.

“I was saving your miserable _life_!” said Lena. “You were falling into a spike pit!”

“Technically, that is true, Dewey. You did trigger a death trap.” Huey said in that prim, diplomatic voice that guaranteed that everything that was to follow would be anything but diplomatic.

“Are you being serious right now?” Dewey said, turning on Huey. The two fell into arguing before Lena felt Webby shift beside her.

“Boys!” Webby called out. “That’s enough! It’s not worth arguing about! Dewey didn’t see the trap and Lena was trying to help him. Nobody meant for any of that to happen!”

Lena and Huey and Dewey traded looks that suggested that if everyone put down their weapons, no one would get hurt. And it just might have worked.

“Even though I was just about to use my grappling hook to save Dewey,” Webby went on to say.

Lena looked at her, jaw unhinged with disbelief. “Wha… what?”

Webby crossed her arms. “I’m just saying, I was about to save Dewey when you jumped in front of me and used magic. I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

“Oh she totally has,” said Dewey.

“What? No,” said Lena. “I was —”

“I mean, it just felt like maybe you didn’t trust me to do it,” said Webby.

“I trust you!” said Lena. “Of course I do! I just… needed… to make sure…”

Webby narrowed her eyes.

“Ooooooh!” said Dewey and Huey. Lena and Webby rounded on them.

“You stay out of this!” they said in unison.

“Kids!” Scrooge said from the cockpit, rapping his cane against the metal of the plane. It was a gesture that commanded silence, and got it. “That’s enough out of you lot. There’s nae fault to assign here. Things happen when you’re in the unknown and you cannae know how you’ll react. What matters is that you were all looking out for each other and you all came out alive. Now. We’re all tired and that’s nae condition tae hash out any grievances. So I suggest some shut eye before —”

“NO! ACRIDAX THE ALL-DEVOURER DEMANDS THE JUVENILES FIGHT MORE, FOR THEY AMUSE ACRIDAX!”

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

“What,” said Huey, “was that.”

“Ach,” said Scrooge. “Acridax is what I came here for.” He gestured with his cane to a dense-looking block of granite at his feet. The size of a shoe box, it had been chained to the floor. Arcane symbols of containment were etched into the dark stone and Lena could feel it ooze power. On the top surface of the block an amber-colored jewel. It glowed with a sickly yellow aura and within that aura was the shimmering image of a grotesquely large insect head with mandibles working and antenna twitching.

“Wow, how did I not notice that?” said Dewey.

“The same way you didn’t notice the spike pit?” Lena said and the two stared each other down.

“Ah-ah,” said Scrooge. “Nae more of that. This wee vicious beastie is supposed tae be some kinda locust god. Commands the locust swarms that ravage the country side and so on. Can strip a village down tae its bones.”

“ACRIDAX THE ALL-DEVOURER EATS ALL ACRIDAX SEES, THE WHOLE OF REALITY IS TO BE CONSUMED,” the awful bug head shrieked.

“It’s cool that we have it on our plane, then,” Louie said. He had been sitting separate from everyone else, headphones on and a small bag of chips in front of him. “Can I just say that the adventures that have no treasure and involve ancient artifacts of evil power are easily our worst ones? Can I throw that out there?” Louie crunched on a potato chip.

“It’s a menace and it’s better tae keep it somewhere secure,” said Scrooge.

“Was anybody even looking for that thing before we showed up?” said Louie.

“One never knows.”

“ACRIDAX THE ALL-DEVOURER DEMANDS TERRIBLE SACRIFICE! ALL SHALL COWER AT THE MILLION MILLION MOUTHS OF ACRIDAX! LET THE —”

“I cannot take this anymore,” said Lena. She hopped out of her seat and stalked towards Acridax. On her way she snatched the bag of chips from Louie.

“Hey!” he said.

Lena dropped the bag of chips on top of the granite block. “Here’s your offering.”

“THIS SACRIFICE PLEASES ACRIDAX!”

The bag crinkled as if being assaulted on all sides by invisible insects. The effect actually mildly unsettled Lena. But at least the thing was no longer talking. The silence that followed was positively blissful.

“Oh,” Louie said as she passed him on the way to her seat. “You have earned an enemy today, Lena.”

“Get in line,” she said.

When she returned to her seat, she couldn’t help but notice that Webby had moved a seat down and was already curled up in fitful sleep.

~~~

When they arrived at McDuck Manor, they couldn’t get away from one another fast enough. Everyone lurched off into some separate corner of the grounds. It hadn’t taken long for the tiny god to start yelling again, and it was awful. The shareholder calls would have been preferable. Only actual physical exhaustion kept the peace on that plane.

Upon passing the threshold of the mansion, Lena bee-lined to her closet for a fresh set of clothes and then a shower. After she came out of that she felt some semblance of normal. All she needed now was sleep and maybe a meal. Or skip the meal. Acridax really put her off food. Those mandibles.

Whatever else there was to say about the mansion and its excesses, it was a great place to be alone while in a bad mood. There were several studies dedicated to brooding. There was an entire wing that — judging from the condition of the carpet — was used mainly for endlessly pacing up and down the corridor. Lena had found a plush leather chair that had a pile of burst stress balls all around it and a box of fresh ones on the armrest. Scrooge struck her as the kind of person who could benefit greatly from meditation but would never in his entire unnaturally extended life try it.

Fatigue weighted her steps and she decided that brooding was a luxury for the well-rested. Lena did have a room. One all her own. She barely used it. After a string of nightmares and a few embarrassing moments where she had jumped at shadows while in Webby’s presence, Webby insisted they have as many sleepovers as Lena needed to adjust to her new life. Lena would have felt self-conscious about it if it hadn’t worked so well.

This time, though, sweating through a couple nightmares on her own felt preferable to having Webby give her the cold shoulder.

Lena fell forward onto the bed and stared at an unadorned wall. Beakley had vetoed any notion of bringing anything over from the amphitheater unless it was fumigated first. Which on one hand, _well excuse me for living_. But on the other, yeah okay. Lena had been sharing that room with a number of pests. So this wasn’t so much Lena’s room as it was a room Lena occasionally dropped in on to remind herself how fresh a transplant she was to this place and this family, and how poorly she fit in. Lena screwed her eyes shut and tried to clear her head of thoughts.

~~~

_Lenaaaaaaa_

She jolted awake and immediately regretted it. At some point she had swatted her pillow off the bed and was sleeping with her neck at a bad angle and _oh that stings_. Lena winced, eyes shut against the ache. She put a hand to her neck and groaned.

“Lena! Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, did I do that?”

“Webby?” Lena opened one eye. Webby was kneeling on the bed beside her, face an open expression of concern.

“I… was… nearby and I heard you,” Webby said, looking to one side. “You were thrashing around.”

Ah. Nightmare No. 8. The thrashing one. Lena had a dream journal now to catalog this new landscape of awful sleep. She wasn’t a fan of Nightmare No. 8. She always woke up with a crick or two in her limbs. Punished for sleeping and waking. She had been sweating too. She felt about as gross as she had walking off the plane, but at least the headache was gone.

“I know you don’t like to sleep through your nightmares so I thought I’d wake you,” Webby said. She was wringing her hands.

Lena pulled herself up and sat against the headboard. “Thanks Webby. That was nice of you.” Her tongue felt dry in her mouth and she had to give herself a little time to speak. She rotated her neck experimentally and winced.

“Can I?” Webby said and held up her hands.

Lena nodded and moved away from the headboard. Webby got up on her feet and walked across the mattress, Lena’s body falling towards her like a planet captured by the gravity of a passing star. Webby settled behind her and put her hands on either side of Lena’s neck. She began massaging.

This was probably weird, Lena thought as Webby kneaded her shoulders. It wasn’t like they were doing anything illicit, but it still felt like this was weird. Or maybe the weirdness was all in Lena’s head. Maybe Webby was being totally clinical about all this. She saw a friend who was in pain and applied her knowledge of physical therapy like the good person she was and it was Lena who was making this into something… else. She closed her eyes and sighed. Maybe just a minute more.

“That’s enough, Webby. I feel better now.” It wasn’t a lie, and Lena turned to give Webby a smile that was genuine enough that Webby returned it.

“Okay.” Webby shifted and sat at the edge of the bed. Her legs swung freely over the side. This, Lena had come to learn, was a bit of a nervous tic. That and Webby’s hunched shoulders and her hands bunched up between her knees and Lena knew, right then and there, she was about to be apologized to.

She was about to be apologized to and it was going to be awful, because Webby hadn’t done anything she should feel sorry for and Scrooge — dammit all — was right and Lena had just needed some sleep and she couldn’t even remember the anger she had felt. Not even towards the boys even though Dewey was being a brat, like, objectively. But Webby saw that Lena wasn’t happy and just assumed it was something she had to fix or apologize for because Webby could be like that and oh, no. Lena watched Webby open her mouth and take a breath.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said, taking the initiative.

“Lena I’m s — What?” said Webby. She whipped her head around and looked at Lena in surprise.

“You were right. I shouldn’t have gotten in your way when you were going to rescue Dewey.”

“O-oh. No, Lena, I’m —”

“You guys are probably used to working as a group,” Lena said, barreling on. “And I’ve just kind of, I don’t know, barged in on that. So. Sorry.”

“No, no! It’s okay, Lena! Really!” Webby rubbed her cheek and looked to the side. “Ha ha. Uh. I was just, you know, blarg! Crabby. I shouldn’t have been. I mean, you were looking out for us. It was just like Uncle Scrooge said. That’s what really matters. Who knows? I might have missed this time, right?”

“Well I got us thrown into bone prison, so I feel like things could have gone better.” Lena fell back onto the mattress and lay there spread-eagled, staring at the ceiling.

“Things happen,” said Webby. “And we got out. So please don’t worry about it. I just wish I hadn’t got all cranky about it.”

“A couple hours of ‘I Spy’ with Dewey in a cage will do that,” said Lena. “The flight in wasn’t all that great.”

“Yeah. Just so you know, not all our adventures end like this.”

“Oh, so some are actually fun?”

“Most are! But sometimes they can stress you out. You should have seen Louie after a mummy chased him.”

“Mmm.”

The mattress shifted as Webby lay on her side. She was all curled up next to Lena, looking at her. Lena kept her eyes firmly on the ceiling because now was not the time to blush.

“What’s on your mind?” said Webby.

“I just think that maybe I am getting in the way,” said Lena. “Like, you and the boys have this whole dynamic. And it works. And I’m just… there.”

“You’ll fit in too, Lena. I was the same way when they first moved to the mansion. It worked out. It will again.”

“I’ve never had to work in a group before. It was always just me and sometimes Magica when she was feeling extra bossy. I’m not really used to having people around me.”

“Before everyone moved in, it was just me, Granny and Scrooge in this mansion,” said Webby. “It was pretty lonely. Looking back, I think I might have had really bad cabin fever. Which would explain why I started crawling around in the ducts with night-vision goggles.”

“You make the look work, though.”

Webby giggled and Lena was going to have to put a stop to this because she still had a reputation to maintain. A reputation that literally no one cared about but she held onto it with the tenacity of someone who had gone through life without all that much to hold on _to_.

She sat up. “Okay, so I have a rule. If I expose myself emotionally before the end of the day, I get to make pancakes with ice cream and chocolate syrup and graham crackers on top.”

Webby righted herself and started bouncing on the mattress. “How many times have you invoked this rule?”

“Literally only now. I just made it up.”

“It’s a good rule. Mind if I join you?”

“I guess I could use a guide to show me where all the stuff is.”

Webby somersaulted off the bed and stuck the landing. She raised her fists over her head. “Emotionally exhausted sundaes!”

Lena smiled and followed. There were probably better sundaes out there, but here and now, this would do.

~~~

Hours later, Louie gave a start as two bags of chips caught him on the side of the face. They crinkled where they landed on the sofa cushion next to him. His brothers, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, looked up to the entrance.

“What gives?” Louie said to Lena, who was leaning against the door frame of the television room.

“Those are my ‘I’m sorry’ chips,” Lena said. “I probably shouldn’t have thrown yours to Mister Locust Whatever. I forgot his name already.”

Louie prodded one bag as if rough handling might cause it to explode. He seemed satisfied once he had determined Lena had gotten the correct brand and flavor. “Eh, it’s okay. I’ve been feeding it all sorts of stuff to see what happens. It likes the beet-flavored corn chips that are in the back of the pantry, so we finally found a use for them.”

“You sure that’s safe?”

“Scrooge says it’s contained? I’m not a technical person I don’t really bother with the details,” Louie said with an apathetic shrug. “Oh, Dewey had something he wanted to say.

“Cool.” Lena leveled her eyes at Dewey and nodded towards him. “Hey.”

“Hey. Uh. I’m sorry too?” he said. Huey elbowed him. “Ow! Yes! I’m sorry about picking a fight. You helped me out. I should be thanking you.”

Huey elbowed him again.

“Ow! And I am thanking you! This is me thanking you. Um. Thank you.”

“Welcome,” said Lena.

Huey cleared his throat and looked at her. “And since we’re all apologizing what about one for me?”

Lena gave him a sidelong look. “I’m apologizing for..?”

“You threw my Junior Woodchuck Guidebook down an abandoned subway platform. After we saw that movie with the mole monsters?”

Lena furrowed her brow. “Dude… that was… ages ago.”

“And you never apologized for it!”

“O…kay. Sorry?”

“Apology accepted.” Huey said with a firm nod.

Lena shook her head and stood up straight. “Alright, later dorks.” She walked away.

Two steps down the hallway and Webby rounded a corner and tackled her with a hug that threatened her ribs.

“See?” Webby said. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“I guess.” Lena wheezed out. She gave a half-shrug that was belied by the smile creeping on her face.

“That warm feeling inside you?” Webby said after releasing her. “That’s the feeling of family.”

“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was just making sure the next time we do a thing it might go more smoothly.”

“Uh huh.” Webby said with a knowing smirk.

“Seriously. It’s just, like, a team-building exercise kind of thing.”

Whatever Webby was about to respond with was immediately cut off. From the television room came a shout.

“Did someone just say team-building exercise?” Huey shot out of the room with a big smile and a troubling gleam in his eye. “There’s a Junior Woodchuck merit badge for that and I’ve been dying to collect it!”

“Oh no,” said Lena.

“We can do trust falls!” said Huey. “Three-legged races! More trust falls, but from a very high building! The longer the fall the deeper the trust!”

“We have to run,” Lena said to Webby.

“Let me get the others!” Huey said and darted back into the room. There was the sound of struggling.

“Lena!” cried Dewey. “This is your fault!”

Lena scooped Webby up, who squeaked in her arms. “We can’t live here anymore,” said Lena. “This place is forbidden. We have to go to the countryside and live off of forage.”

“We’ll do a potluck! _Get out from under that table, Louie!_ ” 

Huey’s voice echoed down the corridor, but Lena was already bolting for the exit. Webby bounced in her grasp and had her arms around Lena’s neck and she was laughing the whole way and Lena was smiling despite all her best efforts. She kicked open the doors of McDuck Manor and dashed across the manicured, sun-drenched lawn.

This was Lena’s first adventure with this family. _As_ a member of this family.

It worked out, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe the real adventure all along is fami -- *is immediately eaten by sharks*


	3. Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 3: Light/Shadows
> 
> Shadows, then light
> 
> (cw: discussions of death and grieving and this is about as dark as these stories get so if that's a thing you need to know about this is me letting you know)

So the Shadow Realm was a thing. Maybe this shouldn’t have come as a shock to Lena. Or maybe the shock was that she was here at all.

Sitting on ground that shifted beneath her, Lena drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Either her eyes were still adjusting to her surroundings or there simply was nothing to see.

A single shadow was not a hardy creature. Lena remembered with detached, clinical detail the gutshot Magica had delivered during their fight. “Fight” being a generous term. All Lena could remember was panic and grabbing desperately at Magica; anything she could do to keep her away from…

Her brain performed a little slide as if the surface of her thoughts were ice.

She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be _anywhere_. Magica punched her clock. Bought that farm. Lena met her maker — literally. And it didn’t work out, and now she was dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Lena put one hand to the ground. It was hot and gritty, like pavement on a hot summer day. But she noted the heat in a disconnected way, as if it weren’t her hand that was burning. It was heat, but the shadow of heat. She clenched her hand and brought up a fistful of the stuff to her face. Smoke rose. Smell still worked, though. She filled her lungs with brimstone and ash.

Disorientation tilted her surroundings and her head reeled. Eyes and ears slammed into the here and the now and the world around her resolved into shapes she could make sense of. She was in a place where everything was shadows and the shadows of shadows. Jagged black shapes sprang up all around her and the cauldron hiss of steam seeping up from the ground beneath her chorused in an amelodious cacophony that scratched her brain like nails on blackboard. Lena braced both hands on the ground as it canted nauseously underneath her. Some great force rippled below and the consistency of the ground disintegrated into something more akin to quicksand.

One of her hands punched right through the earth like it was a flimsy crust and she felt something unseen brush her fingertips.

Questions of existence later, firmer ground _now_.

With wobbly legs on shaky ground, Lena lurched towards a formation of shadows that looked like a boulder. She stepped over hissing geysers of sulfur gas and judged how much weight she could put into her steps as best she could. She tried not to think about how the earth seemed to surge around her feet with a kind of greed. Panicking would be no use now. The hissing filled her ear and ebbed and flowed like the breaths of a great beast.

When she reached the boulder she threw herself bodily at it, clinging like a barnacle resisting the pull of the tides and the crash of the waves. She scrambled up on top and doubled over, brow on the hard rock surface, arms wrapped around her head, closing her eyes and shutting out her ears until she could bring her breathing back under control.

Eventually, the earth subsided and the hissing died down. Lena unfurled herself and sat sprawling on the rock. She looked around. She was surrounded by cliff faces in all directions. They were close. If she could reach them, she could climb them. Yet considering what lay under the ground waiting for her, they may as well be on the moon.

It only took one look at them to know where she was. Or, at least, where she appeared to be.

This was Mount Vesuvius. She was in the caldera of the ancient volcano. It was where she was created.

The Shadow Realm, it turned out, had a sick sense of humor.

~~~

Up here, the sirens in Duckburg didn’t reach. Webby flicked off an errant lawn clipping from her hair as she pushed open the door to McDuck Manor.

They had won, Magica defeated, the shadows dispersed and the family restored. It was all meant to be celebrated, and for a while she did. She even tried that thing where she swam in the money. It was okay, though she didn’t really see the appeal.

Then the adrenaline faded and reality set in and the scrap of yarn around Webby’s wrist felt like a vice. The limo ride back was largely spent in silence. Tomorrow there’d be the salvage. The plane, the boat, the bin and, it turned out, the mansion. Scrooge had alluded to it being a disaster, though he didn’t go into detail. Happy to leave them the impression that Magica had made a mess of the inside.

When Webby stepped on a discarded pizza box, she began to suspect it wasn’t Magica who was responsible. Unless she had developed pizza-based magic. Seemed unlikely.

Until the manor was cleared out, Scrooge opened the guest mansion to the family. Louie had complained right off the bat. The thread count for the sheets in the guest mansion were apparently sub-par to those of McDuck Manor. Webby did not know that.

His moaning served as a perfect cover for Webby, who had slipped out while everyone’s attention had been occupied. She found the manor unsecured after Magica’s exit. As she closed the door softly behind her, the only light available was the moon. High and bright, as if compensating for the eclipse. It cast sharp-edged shadows through the windows and a not inconsiderable hole Magica had blown through the roof.

Webby debated turning on the lights and decided against it. It could alert the others to where she was and besides, it felt… wrong. She knew the place well enough anyway.

The sound of something skittering across the wood floor pierced the quiet and Webby crouched, fists ready and eyes searching the darkness. And from the darkness, two pinpricks of light stared back.

In another time and under different circumstances, Webby would have held her open hand out and said “Hi, I’m Webby!” with a big expectant smile. This wasn’t really the mood at the moment. She had been in a fight, she was tired, it was well past midnight and she suspected she was in one of the more unhelpful stages of grief. If there was something in the shadows waiting for her she would throw herself at it willingly with both fists raised and —

The eyes watched a little longer, then the shape bounded forward into the moonlight. A possum dragging a slice of pizza from its mouth. It regarded her suspiciously with its beady feral eyes and then scampered down a corridor.

“Aw,” she said despite herself. Webby watched it go, then stood up straight and jogged to the stairs that swooped up.

The boys tended to think Webby possessed little common sense. This wasn’t true, though she couldn’t blame them for the assumption. She tended to dive into the unknown and expected her combat and espionage training to lead her back out, whether that unknown was a criminal operation, a deadly ancient temple, or the mystery flavor of the day at the frozen yogurt place down by the docks.

Still, she did have common sense. Right now, it was screaming at her to go back, that this was hopeless, that it was too late. That Lena was gone. Dead, dead, dead.

Webby seldom listened to her common sense and it was giving her ample reason to ignore it now. 

And again, she suspected she was in one of the more unhelpful stages of grief.

She took the stairs two at a time, ascending. Rubbing the bracelet on her wrist as she went.

~~~

A shadow shouldn’t feel tired. It was all so unfair. What was the point of being a construct of darkness if you still felt the burn in your lungs and the ache in your limbs? Lena groaned as she turned herself over and got on all fours. Then she got up to her legs, patting herself down as much to get the dust off her as to check for wounds.

She had tried for the caldera walls. It wasn’t smart, but living on a rock for the rest of her existence — such as it was — did not appeal to her.

But now the ground around the boulder churned. She had barely made it back in time once it was clear she’d never reach the cliffs without falling prey to whatever lay beneath. Now it was awake, and hungry, and Lena was the only meal in sight.

Out of habit, bracing to fight, Lena reached with one hand up to her collarbone, where her amulet — 

— once was. The empty space, the absence of the weight over her heart was almost as uncanny as this place. She had never known a moment of her life without that amulet. As much a part of her as Magica.

Gone now, both. She had never been alone before. She was getting a crash course now. It was, in fact, quite possible that given where she was, she was literally the loneliest person to ever exist.

She held herself in her arms, grit her teeth and looked up into the sky, the dark on dark sky.

The caldera hissed at her but she was lost in her own thoughts. The amulet was gone and Magica too and Lena should feel free. Instead, all she felt was bad. She missed it. Missed it all. Those were good times.

Okay. No. They weren’t good times. It was just…

It used to feel so much better back then. Being a force of chaos and calamity. A cyclone that could tear through it all and… and…

It was all bad. Lena knew that now. No. That was unfair to the people she did it to. Lena _always_ knew it was bad. But back then, Magica had her back. She was there to tell Lena what a good minion she was. What a good little monster. And Lena ate it up. She was so desperate for Magica’s approval she called her _Aunt_. Because she was that pitifully lonely. And Magica encouraged it, even as she likely laughed in the privacy of her exile. It was just another lever to get Lena to do her bidding and it wasn’t even a lever she had to create. Lena did it all herself. 

Like a chump. Like the same chumps she conned and cheated and sabotaged to get what she wanted. No, to get what Magica wanted because that’s what it was all about. Lena’s compass bent towards Magica’s needs, always.

A keening whine cut through Lena’s thoughts. The caldera was positively alive with movement, ash and loose rock kicking up in fonts of streaming matter. Lena kept herself as close to the center of the boulder as she could.

The Shadow Realm was not a vacant place. There were things here that Lena knew well enough. Shadows with no material body to be cast from, they were detached and roaming and tormented, needing a being of flesh to attach themselves to. For the first time, Lena sincerely hoped she did not qualify. They were wild and frenzied things and they preyed on the minds of the beings they hunted. Magica likely had no trouble from them in her exile here, but Lena did not have her will, her unbending trajectory towards vengeance. Lena had nothing.

Lena was nothing.

_Webby would move on._

The thought invaded her, intrusive and seizing her attention even as she heard the things move around her. 

Webby would have to. It would be inevitable. She meant that stuff about Lena being her best friend. Webby was far too Webby to say a thing like that without meaning it. But… life didn’t stop. The world turned and the days would stretch into years and in time Webby would think of Lena — and surely she would, occasionally — as a figure from her youth. Maybe with fondness or disappointment or… whatever. But her feelings now would be dulled by the passage of years. It had to happen. There’d be a time Webby would forget Lena.

And maybe that was best. What had Lena ever been but a blight? Taking advantage of a girl too sheltered to know when she was being used? What basis was that for a friendship? Lena deserved to be forgotten. Deserved to lose her identity in the horde of shadows. Maybe in some unknown future Magica would stand beneath another eclipse and hold up another magical artifact and the next time she summoned Lena it would be as nothing more than another anonymous shadow in the throng. A dark mass writhing in a sea of darkness. And what other fate could she possibly deserve than —

She could see them even as she closed her eyes hard enough to squeeze out the tears that obscured her vision. The shadows had found her and surrounded her. Here, where they had no people to base their forms off of, they were shapeless black blobs with eyes wide, red and unblinking. Hungry. And their mouths were portholes to a somehow blacker black and the sounds they made were shaped by a membrane that flapped limply like curtains over an open window.

And they whispered.

An undulating crowd of staring eyes that inched closer to her, constricting a circle around her and with each pass of breath through the slack flaps of their drooping maws they whispered. Every dark deed and every damning word that could ever be attached to her. Every admonishment and mocking insult that had been spoken in Magica’s voice; high and imperious, in control even when she was as insubstantial as a shadow. Every moment when Magica had denied her control of her own body. Every snare of shadow magic that bound her limbs and constricted her throat and shut her mouth when she tried to speak and act in a way that Magica did not will. Every stolen moment when her only release was to find some lightless nook of Duckburg where she could feel alone enough to cry and pity herself. Every dark time, the shadows closed in and poured into her ears and eyes and mouth every sound and sight and word that reminded her she was a thing built for a purpose and now she was nothing. But the shadows would see to it that she would serve again. She could hear their greed, an undercurrent beneath the whispered venom. They needed her the way Magica did, as an anchor to hold them in place. But not just one shadow this time. An entire host, pulling her this way and that as they pursued whatever mindless instinct shadows possessed. They reached out, formless and terrible.

Then Lena gasped as a sensation like a stinging heat — real heat — passed over her arm and in a passing moment she feared they were on her. Then a blue-white light — strong enough to force her to throw one arm over her eyes — flashed from her wrist and in a stark moment of light and dark Lena saw the surging shadows in sharp contrast before they burst like bubbles in an oil slick. Their ephemeral essence rising from their ruptured bodies like noxious gas. She held her wrist to her chest. The light grew blinding, so intense as to be a physical thing that pushed at Lena’s body and washed over the shadows like a tsunami. She held her arm up, high as she could, muscles aching from the stretch. The light stormed around her.

Then it was gone.

Lena blinked in the new darkness that followed. The caldera had stilled, the volcano tamed. Not a single rock stirred. Lena was alone and profoundly grateful for it.

With a wary eye, Lena regarded her wrist. She had tossed her friendship bracelet into the bay. Another thing Magica had taken from her. Yet here it was, wrapped around her wrist as if she had never taken it off. Except it was glowing this incandescent blue that warmed her throughout. Lena smiled.

“I’m never going to live down the fact that friend magic is an actual thing,” she said. Her voice cracked as if she hadn’t spoken in a hundred years. It felt like it.

“Now that was impressive!” said a voice above her.

Lena jolted up, held her bracelet arm high and directed its light at the voice.

~~~

The door to Webby’s room was closed. She hadn’t expected anything different but just in case she checked the intrusion system she had applied to her door. This was a small length of pink thread she had taped to the door and to the frame. Most people didn’t do this, but most people didn’t have flashbang grenades mixed in with their hair accessories.

Satisfied, Webby opened the door and after checking the corners, bee-lined to her toy chest. She flung the lid back and threw herself waist-deep into it, shoving its contents aside until she felt a familiar leather-bound surface. She pulled it out and held it up in the moonlight.

 _The Grimoire du Merlock_.

Webby didn’t know what to expect. There were no choir of angels or a dramatic thunder crash or even a few minor chords on a pipe organ somewhere. It would have been nice though. It would have been nice to have some dramatic sting as if to say _you’re on the right track, this is going to change everything_.

Instead she stood there. It was just her, the book held up above her, and the silence. The ever-present silence.

No. Webby turned at the soft sound of claws on hardwood and saw the pizza possum again. It had followed her, likely out of curiosity. Webby wondered if it was as disappointed as she was.

Then a broom hovered itself over the animal and gently shoo’d it away. It scampered from the door and down the hall. Webby’s eyes widened.

“Filthy vermin, oh the state of this place.” A prim, disembodied and very put-upon male voice spoke in the gloom.

“Oh,” said Webby. She relaxed. “Hi, Duckworth.”

“Young Miss Vanderquack,” said the ghost butler. He materialized himself, a spectral figure in formal dress holding the broom between his white gloved hands.

“I didn’t expect you to be here so soon,” said Webby. “And working.”

“I’m never too far off. The benefits of being a spirit. Once I saw Mr. McDuck returning with his extended family, I decided to return myself. There is no time like the present when it comes to cleaning, after all.”

“All of that makes sense, yes,” said Webby.

“And what are you and your friend up to at this hour, roaming about?” said the butler.

“My… friend? You mean the possum?”

Duckworth looked down at her for the first time. He wasn’t… well. He wasn’t _stuck up_ or anything like that, Webby thought. Kind of. But he could look down his nose at a person like nobody’s business. She wondered if he got training to be that good at it. Like Webby was trained on how to incapacitate people ten times her size. Some secret butler island where they kept the secret techniques.

For the first time in quite some time, with none of the aloof artifice he carefully maintained, Webby got the feeling he was really looking at her.

Or… looking past her? Webby cast an eye over her shoulder. Nothing there but her shadow in the moonlight.

Duckworth quickly regained his composure and the moment was gone. “My apologies, young Miss Vanderquack. My eyes are not what they used to be, I suppose.”

“Oh,” said Webby, feeling disappointed and not quite able to place why.

“If you’ll excuse me, I should attend to these uninvited guests.” He gestured with his broom.

“Yeah,” Webby said with some relief. “I suppose those possums aren’t going to show themselves out the door, right?”

“Indeed.” Duckworth shimmered in the air, likely to rematerialize elsewhere.

“Wait! Duckworth!” Webby cried. The sudden impulse seized her, even as she couldn’t bring herself to ask the questions she was suddenly dying to ask.

“Yes, Miss Vanderquack?” Duckworth solidified again and held himself with perfect composure. “How may I assist you?”

“Um. Well. Um.” Webby wasn’t usually at a loss for words. But this was a difficult question.

Duckworth waited with the patience of either the dead or an excellent servant. It was hard to tell.

“Is there an afterlife?” Webby said, blurting out the question in a rush before she could shut herself up.

Duckworth raised an eyebrow.

~~~

“Relax, kid, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Lena stepped back, holding her wrist with her other arm, aimed at the source of the voice. “Step any closer and I’m gonna eat your heart, okay?”

The voice chuckled, melodious and gentle. In any other context it would probably be nice to hear, but there was nothing about this place that was nice.

The air shifted around Lena and she could feel the presence move behind her. She whirled around, too late, they were practically on top of her and they were — 

Tall. _Magica_.

No.

She was smiling too much. The good kind of smile. The smile that meant it. Lena scrambled backwards and shined the light on her new intruder. She was a woman with long blond hair and she wore a simple toga with metal bindings.

She was laughing. “Ha. ‘Eat your heart.’ I’m gonna have to remember that one. I like you. What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” Lena said.

“Hm.” The woman regarded her, then shrugged. “Sure, okay. My name is Selene.”

“Selene _what?_ Selene Thompson who works at the gas station?”

“Selene, Goddess of the Moon?”

Lena frowned. It was plausible that she was talking to the actual goddess of the actual Moon. She had to deal with a few mythical beings in Magica’s plan to return to the material world. But it still didn’t explain why she was here of all places.

“Bit far from the moon,” said Lena.

“Still a goddess though. You gonna point your arm at me all night? Must be getting tired.”

“Why are you here?”

“Oh, how could I not be? I’m just minding my business, doing my thing when bang! A sorceress is using _MY_ Moon to bridge the gap between the real world and the Shadow Realm. I had to take a look for myself what was going on. It looked like it all blew over, but just when I was about to go back home I noticed you, little spirit. And I had to see what your deal is. So. What’s your deal? You lost?”

“I don’t need your help!”

“Hm. Well, you probably don’t. Not with that thingamajig there.” Selene pointed at Lena’s ethereal bracelet. “That’s quite the magic totem you’re wearing. There’s some serious energy in it.”

“Yeah well, hands off.”

Selene smirked. “Noted.” She walked past Lena and sat on the edge of the rock. Her pale blond hair swayed in some breeze that Lena didn’t feel.

“Glad I’m just visiting,” said Selene. “This place isn’t exactly hospitable, is it?”

“No.”

Selene looked back. “Alright, come on. Spill girl.”

“No.” Lena dropped her arms and tugged at her sweater.

“Your friend misses you, you know.”

“How did you —”

“Goddess,” said Selene. She wiggled her fingers spookily at Lena. “I can pop on over to let her know you’re still kicking. I know the kid. Like her a lot.”

“No!” Lena said, then wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t.”

“Hm,” said Selene. “She’s pretty torn up over you.”

“Yeah, well, she’ll get over it. That’s what people do when they lose someone. Get sad, then move on. That’s what she should do. She should move on.”

“And you?”

Lena shrugged. “Survive. Until I can’t. That’s also a thing that people do.”

There was something to be said about having a goddess staring at you. Mostly it was unpleasant. Especially when the goddess was pulling a look of disapproval. Extremely good at being disapproving, your deities. Lena could only bear it for so long.

“Here’s the deal,” she said. She slapped her chest with both hands. “Me? Right here? I don’t exist! I never existed! I was never alive! I’m, like, a piece of shadow that spent so long in the material world that it forgot it was a tool! That’s me, okay? And I’m sorry, right? I’m real sorry that Webby ever got attached to me because what a miserable thing it must be to care about a shadow!” Lena had never talked to someone who wasn’t Magica or Webby for this long before. Maybe it was because this goddess had compelled her, or maybe she couldn’t imagine saying anything like this to anyone else and now was her chance. “So maybe it’s best she doesn’t know about me. And I’ll… like… fade from her memory. And that will be that. Because she’ll make other friends. Because it’s not like this world lacks for rebellious teens! The main exception being that they’re actual people! And not — ow! What the hell!”

Lena clapped her hands over her head. While she was talking, Selene had plucked a feather from her. She held the pink-tipped feather and regarded it with a critical eye.

“Hm? You say something, kid?” she said.

Lena scoffed. “Don’t act like… you just took a feather out of me!”

“Well that’s not possible. Shadows don’t have feathers. They’re shadows. Why did you saw ‘ow’?”

“Because it hurt? Asshole?”

“Shadows don’t get hurt.”

“Do you think you’re proving some kind of point with this?”

“Am I not?” Selene said with wide, innocent eyes. “I sure hope I am, we’re not known for our patience, us goddesses. So you either get what I’m saying or I’m going to start losing interest.”

“I’m not real!”

“You feel pain, you express emotion. What would it take to satisfy you that you are, in fact, a person? You want a certificate of authenticity? I don’t have one on me. If you can’t accept what your own senses are telling you, then I don’t think even a divine being can convince you. I gotta say that you are setting a much higher bar for your own existence than most anyone else does.”

Lena stared. Selene stared back. Then she tickled Lena’s bill with her feather. Lena spluttered and swatted the hand away.

“So… what?” she said. “I think therefore I am? That’s it?”

Selene shrugged. “Works for everyone else.”

Lena sat on the ground, shoulders sagged and outrage spent.

Lena had never been her own person, let alone _a_ person. Everything she had done was in service of Magica’s quest for revenge. All the petty lies and the little sabotages and the skulduggery. It was easy for Lena to see it as part of who she was, but until very recently who she was was Magica’s puppet. With that no longer the case, Lena was just Lena. That had never happened before.

It was a lot to deal with.

“You can choose to live,” said Selene.

“I’ve never made a choice in my life.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is! Magica always decided for me!”

“You chose to save Webby. That was something you didn’t have to do.”

“No, that’s… that’s not…” Lena felt the words come out of her unbidden. “That was never a choice. If I had to choose her against anything else… it’s always going to be Webby.”

Selene’s smile, somehow, grew wider.

“I don’t… deserve to have Webby worrying over me,” said Lena. “I did stuff.”

“So suddenly Magica’s choices are yours? That doesn’t add up, kid. We are not just the sum of our choices. There’s too much going on in the world for that to be true. But our choices still matter. Even when they feel like they don’t make a difference. We still have to stake our claim to the things and the people we care about. Otherwise what’s the point of living? A moon orbits a planet, and the moon doesn’t get to have an opinion about it. It’s just a big dumb rock. Bound to the laws of physics.”

“And if the moon _could_ have an opinion on it, would it matter?” said Lena. “It’s still got to orbit the planet.”

“I think it would matter to the moon,” said Selene. “So. What matters to you?”

Lena let out a long breath. She stared at her wrist. The band of light pulsed, soft and blue.

_What matters to you?_

She looked up, and there was the moon. It wasn’t there before. Its gray seas and its white craters were in an unfamiliar configuration. It looked… Lena squinted and raised her bracelet arm. She reached out to —

~~~

Webby fidgeted under Duckworth’s ghostly gaze. Fantastic butler, but not the best conversationalist.

“That is very unfortunate, Miss Vanderquack. My condolences on the matter of your friend.”

“Um. Thanks. Duckworth.” She was beginning to suspect this was a mistake. Telling Duckworth about the entire fight with Magica had mostly resulted in him commenting on the dreadful state the money bin must be in right now.

“As to your question in regards to the afterlife, I’m afraid there’s not much useful I could tell you. One’s impression fades quite quickly when one returns to the land of the living.”

Webby felt a glimmer of hope. “But that means it exists, right?”

“Why do you wish to know?”

“Because I — I,” there was a risk that he would go off to tell Scrooge. He was the most loyal manservant in McDuck Manor and there was no reason to believe that death had changed that. But the words were bursting from Webby. She wasn’t the best at secrets, and she felt like she had to tell someone. “I want to bring her back. From the underworld. Lena. My friend.”

“I see,” said Duckworth, no sign of being disturbed at this. “May I ask how you propose to do that?”

“I have this book of magic!” Webby said, nodding down to the grimoire she clutched to her chest. “And… there’s stories about people going into the underworld to get someone they care about. And if there’s stories then there must be a way. Because that’s what magic is, to me. It’s what happens when a story becomes real.”

“Mm.” The barest hint of a frown could be seen in the corner of Duckworth’s mouth. “Could I persuade you not to do this?”

Webby looked up at him and rocked back on her heels. Disbelief sent a shock through her body, even as she told herself she should have expected this. “N-no. I. Please don’t.”

“I think it would be best.”

“I know.” Webby started to sway. A vibrating tension ran up and down all her limbs. “I know that this is a long shot.” Each word spoken deliberately, pronounced carefully, because to lose control now meant to lose control entirely. “But I have to try.” The final syllable came out like a high whine that Webby had not intended.

“It would not work.”

“I. I. I. _Know_.” Webby felt a tear form in the corner of her eye and she near punched it off when she moved to wipe it away. “I. I. Keep telling myself. That. It’s. Over. But there’s some part of me that won’t let go.” Duckworth said nothing as Webby sniffled. “And. And. And… I have to listen to that part! Because… or else…” The words stopped. Internally, Webby was spinning out of control. This was what it felt like, she knew beyond doubt. This is what it felt like to say goodbye and mean it. And that stubborn part of her, the core of her, _rebelled_ against it. It screamed and raged and fought every impulse to sorrow that every other part of her told her she needed to succumb to. Instead it reached out. It did… something.

She clenched her eyes shut tighter and her face was pulled into a rictus but the tears came all the same except this time when she moved to rub them away she had to stop because suddenly her wrist was _burning hot_ and there was this blinding light that shone through the thin membrane of her eyelids. She dropped the grimoire and flung her hand far from her face to keep that shining star out of her eyes.

And her outstretched hand gripped another’s. It latched onto her and more out of instinct than anything else, Webby pulled.

And pulled.

And the light blinked out as suddenly as it appeared.

And when Webby opened her eyes and when they adjusted to the darkness, the first thing she saw was the hand clutching hers and the bracelet around its wrist.

And there was Lena, on her hands and knees and blinking out the blinding light just as Webby was.

“W-w-what!” said Webby. “ _Whaaaaaaaat?_ ” Her fingers gripped Lena’s tighter.

“Shall I prepare additional bedding for you friend, Miss Vanderquack?” said Duckworth.

Webby looked at him. “You! You! You said that —”

“I said it wouldn’t work.” Duckworth shrugged. “She was never dead.”

Webby’s mouth hung slack. “ _You are the worst butler on the entire planet!_ ” she shrieked.

“Webby?” said Lena, taking up all her attention immediately. “You’re holding a little too tight.”

“ _Ohmigoshi’msorry!_ ” Webby relaxed her grip, but did not let go. It still felt too unreal to let go. If this was some dream and Webby was collapsed on her floor holding onto a piece of old pizza then letting go might mean the dream would end and she’d wake up alone with smushed pizza in one hand and the dream was far, far, preferable.

Instead she helped Lena up onto her feet and pulled her into a hug. A tight one.

“Lena! Please tell me this is you and not pizza!”

“Um. Okay. Yes. This is me. I am not pizza. Hi. Wow. Hi.”

Webby was somewhere between sobbing and laughing, all mashed together as she buried her face into Lena’s sweater. Lena, for her part, propped herself against the wall and patted Webby’s head with her free arm, eyes wide and dumbfounded as she looked around the room as if expecting it all to evaporate.

It never did.

~~~

A butler always knew when to discreetly make an exit. A proper butler at least, and Duckworth, despite the protestations of the impulsive and youthful, was the most proper butler there was. Not long after Miss Vanderquack’s acquaintance made her entrance from the Shadow Realm, Duckworth had ducked out. He stood in the entrance hall, watching as column after column of pizza boxes marched out of the manor under his spectral influence.

Only once did he look up at the moonlight that illuminated the room through the hole in the roof. It was likely an atmospheric disturbance: the clouds passing over, perhaps. But for a moment it appeared as if the Moon had vanished.

“Really Ducky? Making the kid cry?” said Selene. She sat on a pizza box as it floated past. “That’s how you get her to work her magic?”

“You have your method, I have mine,” Duckworth said, not missing a beat.

“Death hasn’t improved your social skills, man.”

“But it has made me a more efficient butler.”

Selene stuck her tongue out at Duckworth. Then she was gone. The clouds parted, and the Moon was where it belonged.

Duckworth shook his head. “Showboat,” he said.


	4. Rainy Day, Duckburg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 4: Date
> 
> Webby goes shopping

She should have brought one of the boys. Webby had kept a lid on that particular regret for a while, but at this point it had boiled over and become something she could no longer deny as she scanned the mall directory in front of her.

It shouldn’t have been a problem. It had been several years since she started venturing beyond the manor grounds. She had talked to people! Been in public places! She could look at some innocuous everyday object that she had never encountered before and _not_ think of multiple ways she could incapacitate a person with it! She was properly socialized and everything.

So buying a gift should not present such an obstacle.

And yet…

Scrooge didn’t accept gifts. Granny was satisfied with anything that could keep her hair bun in place and, in a pinch, also garrote a target if need be. Donald took anything that would patch up his constantly deteriorating boat. The triplets had pretty obvious preferences. But Lena…

Webby wrung her hands and swept her eyes over the directory again. She felt foolish. There were a lot of things Lena liked. Hair dye, tastefully distressed clothes, music that either had a lot of yelling or a lot of droning while a violin in the background played a single note for 30 seconds, stationary that had a certain vibe to it that Webby could never quite nail down. But none of that felt right.

They had made arrangements, Webby and Lena. They were _date_ arrangements. Webby knew this because she made sure to ask Lena three times after the initial ‘yes’. Then she got a dictionary from the library and pointed at the word, just in case. Then she got overexcited, squeaked, dropped the book and ran, leaving Lena on the couch smiling in that way? That she did? That made Webby’s chest cavity just twist?

You get something special, for someone who could do that to you. Webby didn’t need an article or a guide to tell her that much. She might have needed one to ask Lena in the first place _okay_ but after that things went surprisingly well. If only because Webby had collapsed onto the floor, kicking her feet and covering her face and Lena gently suggested she be the one to take over the actual planning of the date. Webby was pretty sure she agreed to that. At the very least, Lena had texted her a time and a place.

Webby closed her eyes and centered herself. She could do this. Lena was taking all this in stride, so she could too. Find a store, get something nice that means something but isn’t too overwhelming but still has that personal touch that says “hey, I pay attention to you!” but not in a way that’s too obsessive because Webby knew she could get like that she still remembered her massive corkboard of Scrooge-related investigations and she couldn’t bring all that to bear on Lena after all and —

Webby closed her eyes again, and centered herself. This was how she window shopped, with starts and stops. As she did, she mentally flipped through the list of Lena’s interests. Then it hit her. There was something Lena was learning to embrace, now that she had a few years between her and certain traumatic events. Perfect!

Padding down the broad mall walkway, Webby found a likely store. She entered and weaved through displays of various bottles before finding someone with a company name tag. “Excuse me!”

A girl around her age turned to face her with a fixed smile. “Hi! How can I help you?”

“I need to see your finest spell components and books of magic!”

The girl’s smile became more fixed. “I’m. Sorry?”

“Do you perhaps have a collection of cauldrons I could look at?”

“Uhhh…”

“How about familiars? No, no, of course you won’t have those here. Just the components then.” Webby clasped her hands behind her back and bounced on the balls of her feet with anticipation.

The beleaguered stock girl looked from side to side. “Did… you have something specific in mind?” she asked in desperation. 

“Let’s see… do you happen to have a bell cast from silver sanctified by a holy figure? No particular religion. Just generally holy. Or a quartz crystal attuned to local leylines? Honestly I’d accept a feldspar too. Oh, chalk for magic circles! Preferably chalk infused with powdered obsidian. Where do you keep your druid stones?”

The girl clapped her hands together and her eyes were in full deer-in-headlights mode. “We… uh… we might sell those… online?”

“Oh, I’m not allowed to shop online anymore,” said Webby. “I’m on a watchlist! Did you know that just because a company advertises that it sells military grade hardware doesn’t mean that it’s legally allowed to ship over state lines?”

“Oh…”

“I know!”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any of those. We mostly deal in fragrant soaps and bath bombs.”

“Fragrance? Like incense?”

“Well… we have scented candles?”

Webby’s eyes lit up. “Perfect! Now, which scent would you recommend to ward off evil spirits?”

“I… like… the strawberry?”

“Also good!”

~~~

Soft rains suffused Duckburg in a gentle blanket of white noise. The ground was a haze of raindrops striking cement and the leaves of trees planted along the avenues swayed under the weight of droplets leaving trails along the contours of their slick, green surfaces.

Webby watched rivulets of rainwater form on the window she was sitting next to. She was on a bus taking her to the location Lena had texted her. One leg bouncing with anticipation, the other supporting the small paper bag containing a couple wrapped scented candles. One strawberry, the other lavender.

Right now, her emotions were triangulated somewhere between keyed up excitement, nervousness, and a lullaby drowsiness brought on by the patter of rain and the overcast clouds that arched overhead and filtered daylight into a sleepy gray. The world to Webby felt like it was teetering from a death-defying jig on a razor’s edge to a dream-like haze of gentle unreality. The feeling was indescribable and she wished she could take it physically and trap it in a bottle. For all the mystery and adventure and danger she sought out in her life, right now she felt she knew the city as intimately well as the rain that traced out its every crack and corner and facade. She felt a connection to the moment that was so profound she wondered if she’d ever feel anything like it again.

Then the brakes on the bus wheezed and the hydraulics of the door squealed. This was her stop. Collecting herself and her gift, Webby walked quickly down the aisle and, after thanking the driver, hopped off.

She didn’t mind the rain much, the address wasn’t far. She wondered what awaited her there. After all this time, Lena still managed to surprise. It could be literally anything. Race cars, lasers, airplanes —

“Hey, Webs.”

Lena was there standing near a building, shielded from the rain by a canopy. Webby smiled and dodged around puddles and situated herself next to Lena, her shoulder against Lena’s arm. “Hi!” she said.

“Hi.” Lena looked down at her and smiled, all cool and casual. Webby returned it. Lena wore a beanie over her hair, pink fringe peaking out the side. Over her sweater she wore a black and red checked coat. It was a casual look that left Webby worried that she had gone a bit too fancy with her lilac, wool knit houndstooth maxi dress and dark sweater.

There was a shape concealed under one side of Lena’s jacket but that was quickly forgotten when Lena spoke.

“You look real good,” she said and clasped her hand. The grip felt reassuring to Webby, and she leaned further into Lena’s side.

“Thanks,” she said. “You too.”

“Wanna head inside?”

“Sure,” said Webby. She took Lena’s arm and draped it around her shoulder and they walked together to a nearby entrance. Webby scanned it for a sign.

“Oh! A cafe!”

“Yeah.” A hint of uncertainty tinged Lena’s voice. “Hope you don’t mind. I know it’s kind of, whatever, but I figured that we basically fight ghosts and stuff every other week so maybe something chill would be nice?”

“It’s perfect!” Webby said as they entered. “I don’t think I drank in a cafe before.”

“What? Come on.”

The weather had chased a small crowd indoors, but they found a vacant booth tucked against a window. Webby scooted into one side and Lena the other.

“What about Madrid?” said Lena. “There was a cafe there.”

“I remember that. We didn’t really _go_ there.”

“We were definitely inside.”

“Only because we had to run through it. We were being chased by the Werebull. It destroyed the place.”

“There was the one in Istanbul.”

“Louie got possessed by the ghost of a crusader who was buried underneath.”

“Shame we couldn’t stay. Then… Seoul!”

“We rescued a baby dragon that was being used to heat up the foamed milk.”

“Really wish we at least tried their drinks.”

“It was exploitative!”

“Yeah, but a dragon latte!”

Webby kicked at Lena playfully beneath the table.

“There was a cafe in Hades,” Lena said wistfully. “Coffee cakes on point.”

“And what’s Scrooge’s first rule for visiting the underworld?”

“Never eat or drink anything you are given,” they said simultaneously. They laughed. It wasn’t funny, but they were both giddy and practically jumping in their seats. Webby expected as much from herself, but seeing Lena like that was unexpected. Lena, likely catching on to this, quickly composed herself.

“So,” she said, clearing her throat. “What would you like to drink?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Something warm and sweet but not too sweet?”

“I’ll see what I can get,” said Lena. “Be right back!” She slid out of the booth and headed to the counter.

Webby rested her head in her hands and kicked her feet. She was feeling restless and relaxed all at the same time and wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. She was on a date with Lena. That was not up for debate. But at the same time it just felt like… Webby and Lena. They had lived under one roof for so long that it felt natural to slip into the little niche they had carved out for each other at one another’s side. Was that a good thing? Were they so comfortable that they weren’t going to move out of that niche into something more? Was that something they even wanted? Webby did. She definitely did. Looking back she could recognize now the infatuation she had fallen into pretty much when they had met.

And now, time and hardship had given them the opportunity to see one another in moments that would define a relationship and through it all they were still side by side. Webby knew what she wanted. Did Lena?

All this thinking left Webby dizzy. She wasn’t the kind to dwell. She was the kind to _act_. This whole date thing was no different than an ancient temple of cunning traps or a monster guarding treasure. She just needed a plan of action.

Lena returned with two mugs and when she did, Webby struck. As soon as Lena sat down, Webby stood, moved to her side, and slid in after her. Their shoulder pressed against each other. Webby looked up.

“It’s cold. Is this okay?”

For her part, Lena lost a beat before blinking. “Yes. Totally. This is okay.”

Webby nodded.

They turned to their drinks in companionable silence. They sipped in turns and looked out at the rainy street in turns and tinny jazz played over the sound system and the murmur and clinks of cafe ambiance filled the silence.

“This is good,” said Webby.

“It’s hazelnut,” said Lena.

“No. I mean, yes, that too. But I mean all this.” She nodded around her. “We don’t sit down much. There’s always something.”

“Yeah, there’s always something.” Lena sighed.

“I don’t want to miss out on it,” said Webby. She leaned harder into Lena and Lena accommodated her by shifting her arm so that it was behind Webby. Webby could smell Lena and damp wool and caffeine, a blend uniquely of that moment. “I mean, monsters and treasures and mysteries and far-off places, yes. But also, drinking coffee in little stores and shopping for clothes and, and, taking walks. Listening to traffic and watching lightning storms from my bedroom window and… all that stuff. You know what I mean?”

“I think so. You think it’s possible to get the best of both worlds?” Lena looked down at her and Webby decided that yes, it was in fact possible to get lost in someone else’s eyes. It was an awful expression but there it was. Happening right now.

“I think it’s worth finding out,” she said. “Do you?” She pressed in closer.

Lena blinked at her. “Uh. Yes. Yes. Yes absolutely. Yeah.”

Webby raised an eyebrow. “Lena… are you nervous?”

“What? No! Nope.”

“That is adorable.”

“Webby, come on.” Lena turned away, put her face in her free hand and blushed and snickered into her palm.

“I thought you were being cool!” said Webby. She punched Lena playfully in the shoulder.

“God! Of course I’m not! How can you possible expect me to be? Especially when you’re being all… this?”

“Do you have any idea how much I was working myself up looking for a gift to give you? Afraid I was going to mess up today?”

“I was wondering what that bag was,” Lena said.

“Yeah well keep wondering! No, I’m just kidding. Here, let me…” Webby reached blindly under the table. She had left the candles on the floor. When she felt a handle she pulled it up and produced —

“This isn’t mine,” said Webby. The logo wasn’t even from the story she had shopped at.

Lena blushed further. “Oh. No. That’s mine. I mean. It’s yours, but I got it for you.”

“You got me something too?”

“Yeah. Well.” Lena waved her hands over her head. “Afraid of messing up and whatever.”

“Awww.”

“Go ahead and open it.”

Webby did, and spread the contents out on the table. “Oh! A survival kit! Tincture of iodine to purify water, activated charcoal, a waterproof fire starter and… is this a recipe for hardtack? I’ve always wanted to live off of hardtack for a few months. Just to see if I could do it. Oh, Lena this is so thoughtful!”

“Anything for you, you know?” said Lena.

“Kind of makes my gift seem lame.”

“It’s perfect.” Lena shifted back close to Webby and draped her arm over Webby’s shoulder.

“You haven’t even seen it.”

“Webby.”

Webby looked up. “Yeah?”

And Lena dipped in. It was brief, the kiss. Quicker than Webby would have liked but at the same time they were in public and she didn’t come here to put on a show. But it was there and undeniable and when Lena withdrew Webby felt where their beaks made contact as if it were a newly born part of her.

“It’s perfect,” Lena reiterated.

Webby felt the blush creep up her face and she buried her head into Lena’s side.

 _”Lenaaaaaaa,”_ she said in a high whisper and she felt Lena’s body vibrate as she laughed.

After all this time, Lena still managed to surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no drama, just obligatory cafe nonsense


	5. Put It Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 5: Time
> 
> Find new purpose and return what was taken

The high equatorial sun bounced off a constellation of dew drops speckling the broad leaf of a jungle plant. It swayed over Lena’s head in a gentle arc, as if it were fanning her and this was all a luxury trip filled with days of pampered excess in a tropical paradise.

Then the leaf folded in on itself and two rows of thorns extended from its edge. The carnivorous plant loomed over her and snapped at her face. Lena raised her machete over her head and hacked through the thick growth, splitting it to the stem. A shower of dew and the noxious ichor sprayed down on her.

“Awesome,” she said dryly. She scrubbed at her face and shook various fluids off her helmet. “This is. So awesome.”

“Did you get it?” A voice called out from above her.

“Yeah, babe.”

A rustle of leaves at her feet grabbed her attention. Lena rolled her eyes. “Oh come on.” 

More toothy leaves peeled themselves from the jungle floor and reared up to attack. Lena raised her free hand and pointed. A lance of magical energy blossomed from her fingertips and speared into the heart of the plant, cutting through the thick bulb that anchored it to the ground, gouging through the red, laterite soil and piercing its root system.

It collapsed and began to shrivel before Lena’s eyes.

“You did it!”

Lena looked up. Webby hung suspended upside down from a tree branch and she was looking down at Lena, all wide eyes and smiles. She had that open, trusting expression of pure joy on her face that made Lena’s heart skip a beat every time. But no. Lena would be resolute this time. Really. She crossed her arms.

“You could have jumped in any time, you know,” she said.

Webby tilted her head. “I’m tied up in vines!” The plant had captured her and, in accord with its nature, would have seeped its enzymes through its vines, digesting her in the open over a span of days. One of the grislier kinds of death someone could get in the jungle, but Webby seemed to regard it as a hiccup in her itinerary. Already the vines were withering away in the wake of the plant’s death.

“See?” Webby wiggled her hands, poking out from the binding of vines. “I don’t even have my machete.”

“Don’t act like I didn’t see you strap five other blades onto yourself when we dressed this morning,” said Lena. “I’ve seen you worm your way out of worse.”

Webby looked at Lena with an expression that flickered through several emotions before settling on a sheepish one. “Aw, come on, Lena.”

“Just admit you have a fetish for me rescuing you,” Lena said with a smirk.

“What? That’s — no. What? Ha ha! Who would — why — what?” Webby looked away and whether it was because she was blushing or gravity pooling blood into her head, her face was incandescent crimson. She was fidgeting so much the vines creaked and swayed.

Lena holstered her machete. Then she looked up and with a wave of one hand she cut through Webby’s vines with shimmering light. Webby plunged headfirst towards the ground before Lena scooped her up mid-fall with practiced ease. It was not the first time she had to do something like this. Being with Webby meant being really familiar with the way gravity plucked her out of the air.

Looking down at her, Lena tried not to let her eyes linger. Webby had grown since they were kids. Just not by much. Just a bit stockier with all the muscle she had cultivated over the years and she still fit perfectly in Lena’s arms. “Worry not,” she said with an affected voice. “You’re safe with me. Always.”

Webby blushed and it was definitely a blush this time. She buried her head in Lena’s chest, closed her eyes and kicked her feet in the air. “ _Lenaaaaaa_.”

Lena smiled down at Webby. Then she looked for a patch of ground that she judged was suitably soft and, holding Webby over the spot, she pulled her arms away and let Webby fall.

“But I am not carrying you back to camp,” said Lena.

“Ow.”

~~~

“Didn’t figure you as the damsel in distress type, Miss Vanderquack,” Lena called out as she retraced the path they had hacked out of the jungle when they initially left camp.

“I wasn’t! And I’m not! It’s just…” Webby trailed behind her. It was decided — after a few too many leaves to the face — that the person who should be cutting the path through the jungle would be the taller one.

“Just?” said Lena.

“Well — _Miss Vanderquack_ — maybe I didn’t want to be rescued by just _anyone_ ,” said Webby. “Maybe I was waiting for the right knight in shining armor.”

“I’m no knight. And I certainly don’t have shining armor.”

They passed into a clearing and the glow of their camp. Lena heard a rustling of leaves behind her and then Webby jumped, landing on Lena’s back and putting her beak close to Lena’s ear. Her voice was pitched low.

“The analogy falls short, I admit,” she said. Her breath tickled at Lena.

Lena laughed. “You always know what to say.”

She curled her arms under Webby’s legs and walked the two of them to the nearby pile of crates. There she spun around and sat Webby on top of one before heaving herself up. The two smiled at each other and relaxed. Spirits were high. This was their first return, and it had ended in success.

“That felt good,” Lena said. “Even with the monster hell plants. It felt… right.”

“Good!” said Webby. “I’m glad. I’ve never seen you so eager to go on an expedition before. It makes me happy.”

“I’ve done loads of adventures,” Lena protested. She put an arm over Webby’s shoulder and they pressed in close. “Like, consistently.”

“Sure but it was always ‘ugh I’m too cool but I guess I’ll go, oh Webby I’m so hopelessly in love’ —Ack! Lena!”

“Brat,” Lena said with a smile, withdrawing her finger from where she poked Webby at a sensitive point in her ribs.

They went back and forth like that for some time before settling back beside each other. “Still think this is a good idea?” said Webby.

Lena looked up. Their clearing was free of the rainforest’s endless canopy. Even with the low campfire, the emerging stars were still vibrant in the twilight sky. The band of the Milky Way would glow through soon. “It’s not about whether or not it’s good,” Lena said as near for herself as for Webby. “It’s about whether or not it’s right. But yeah. I still think it is.”

“Okay.” And Webby said it with a finality in her tone that meant that it was all settled and no further discussion was needed. Lena marveled at that. Webby got it from her grandmother, of course. Still, Lena wanted to talk it out. To make sure it was truly okay. Maybe she got that insecurity from her own upbringing.

“Is it really? Technically all this crap is yours.” Lena gestured at the crates scattered around the campsite. They dominated the place, with only the one tent and a few supplies to suggest people were meant to camp here.

“Uncle Scrooge might have left ‘this crap’ for me in his will,” Webby said in a small voice. “But he understood perfectly well that anything of mine is yours too, Lena.”

“I miss the geezer,” said Lena.

“I know. So do I.” Webby rolled away and landed on the ground. She busied herself prepping the camp for the night. She doused the fire and sifted through the embers. Lena watched and admired. Webby was dense muscle in a compact frame. You couldn’t put that much energy into a single point in space before it would become a singularity.

Eventually, Webby rejoined her.

“If you want this, I want this,” said Webby. “I may only understand a little, but it’s important to you. That’s all I need.”

“Thanks.” Trust radiated off of Webby as if it were a form of energy. Through all their years together, Lena still didn’t know how to handle that. All she could do was be grateful for it and live up to it. Deserve it.

“So,” said Webby. “What’s next on the list?”

“We’re returning the Kris of Yama and the Book of Doors to a lost temple dedicated to Indra.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything called a ‘Book of Doors’ in the Other Bin’s inventory.”

“That’s because it was mislabeled and put in the library when it should have been locked up. Remember when Huey’s kid needed a book for her book report project? And then her entire elementary school fell into a Death Realm?”

“Oh,” said Webby. “ _That_ Book of Doors. Wow, yeah. Huey still talks about the PTA meeting afterward. But hey, there was no long term physical damage. And I got to fight a krasue!”

“Gonna be honest with you, babe. Was not a fan of the krasue.” 

“Ha ha. Yeah. She was kind of gross, now that I think of it.”

“And that’s another reason to do this. We can’t have this sort of stuff just lying around in Duckburg.”

“But it’s not lying around. Or at least, not all of it. When it’s properly inventoried. That’s what the Other Bin is _for_.” 

“Webby, we broke into that place when we were kids. It’s not safe.”

“True. But there’s probably local museums that would take artifacts too, though,” Webby said.

“Sure. The safe stuff. We can work out the details.” There was hesitation in Lena’s voice. Webby turned to her.

“You can tell me anything, you know that right?” she said.

Lena sighed, knowing that she could, that there’d be no judgment. With Webby, there had never been. Just an earnest desire to understand. And maybe Lena didn’t always want to explain herself, to lay her heart out in words, but the option was there. Even if she occasionally needed reminding. With a deep breath, she dove in.

“All this stuff? It’s not ours, Webby. I know that Scrooge left you all the artifacts in his will — and a good thing too, imagine Louie with this stuff — but it was never his to give away. All these artifacts had a place where they were meant to be. A lost city or abandoned temple or underground catacomb, and who are we to say that they should ever have been brought up to light when their creators never intended it?”

“Someone else can come along and loot them, though,” said Webby.

Lena looked at her with a wicked little smile. “Let them! Maybe that’s how it’s always going to be. Maybe we’re just putting them back so someone else could take them, but maybe that’s not so bad either. An artifact in a vault is the end of a story. So let’s put them back. Let’s find the temples and the pyramids and the crypts they came from. The altars and the pedestals in all the secret corners of the world. Every ‘X’ on every treasure map. Let’s go back there and put back what was taken away. And from there… new stories can grow. Leave them for the next generation of idiots with more recklessness than good sense. Let them crash through the wastelands and the jungles. Let them wander ruins and solve riddles and dodge traps. If Scrooge wants a legacy, I can’t think of a better one than making him one chapter in a forever expanding chronicle of discovery.”

Webby lunged up and took Lena’s head in her hands, pulled her down into a kiss.

“I love it when you get poetic,” she said when they parted.

Lena endeavored to look anywhere but directly into Webby’s eyes. There was such a thing as _too damn much_. “Ha ha. Yeah. Well. That’s. That’s me.”

Webby fell back and winced. “Ouch. I just wish I knew you were going to do it in advance. I would have grabbed some pillows.”

“Oh, right, how rude of me,” Lena said through a wry smile. She shoved off from the crate and padded across the campsite to their tent.

“My beautiful rebel wife,” Webby said, her voice carrying across the clearing. “Returning mystical artifacts like they were overdue library books.”

“It doesn’t sound nearly as cool when you put it like that,” said Lena when she returned with pillows and sleeping bags. She arranged them on the crates with Webby before rejoining her in their impromptu nest.

Lena looked up. Webby looked at Lena.

“This is important for you, isn’t it?” said Webby.

“Every time Scrooge came home from his expeditions, he’d bring back some magical sword or cursed jewel or a statue that could talk.” Lena spoke as she stared up at the emerging Milky Way. When Lena was younger and susceptible to more florid prose she liked to think of it as a rainbow for the night. She would never say such a thing out loud, because she wanted to go through life with a little dignity. Still, she loved it all the same. The Milky Way. Vast and mysterious.

Unknown.

“And every time he locked one of those things up in his vault or just stuffed it in his garage, I don’t know. It felt like the world got… smaller. A little less mysterious. One less place that hid one less enigma. And… when I looked at those things, gathering dust in their display cases… it felt like it was me, under the glass.”

“How do you mean?” said Webby. No protestations, no denials, just a desire to listen and to learn. What had Lena done to deserve her again? She hoped to find out, one day.

“Magical shadow with an ancient amulet of power,” said Lena. “That was me. Another anomaly just like the other strange things that Scrooge flushed out of the dark corners of the world. I’m not that anymore. I have a life, and I will always want it, this life with you. But at the same time… I don’t know. I guess I feel a connection to this idea of the world as a place full of danger and mystery. And… magic.”

Lena felt the rough wood underneath. “Maybe this is my way to make sure the world stays that way.”

They lay silent under the stars. The jungle buzzed with life around them as the nocturnal animals crawled from their lairs. Lena had created a magical barrier that kept animal life away from their camp and as night closed in she felt like she and Webby were in the own little world. Like a snowglobe.

“Okay,” said Webby.

“Okay?”

“You convinced me. I think this is the right thing to do.”

“Okay. Good. Um. You have veto power, you know,” Lena said. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to humor me or whatever.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t help but think,” said Webby, “that this is gonna be a big job. Uncle Scrooge spent most of his life collecting stuff from around the world, and he lived really long. Restoring everything could take a lifetime.”

Lena rubbed Webby’s shoulder. “Oh, no. A lifetime spent globe-trotting, exploring, adventuring and being alongside my wife? What an ordeal this will be.”

Giggling, Webby poked Lena’s side.

They lay there for some time, and the night sky wheeled overhead. Lena sighed, contented. Talking all this through with Webby had felt like a reaffirmation. Webby had been right. Lena had joined in on the McDuck family’s adventures plenty of times, but she had never really fit in. She got along _fine_ and everyone counted her as family, but it had never been about the adventure for her. Mainly she just wanted to be close to Webby, though she’d never voice it.

This was different. There was a drive in her she never suspected she’d feel. She wondered if it was the same drive Scrooge had. Just kind of in reverse. It felt good. Maybe the old man was onto something. Webby by her side, artifacts of ancient power all around her and a mission before her.

“Say, Webby?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know what crate we’re on right now?”

Webby shifted. “Let me see the inventory number. Oh… this is… the Mirror of Niflheim. If you break it, the world is engulfed in eternal winter. Uncle Scrooge looted it from a Norse burial mound on the coast of Finland.”

“Oh.” Lena blinked. “When we put it back, let’s… I don’t know, put a towel or something over it. Just in case.”

Webby nuzzled her neck and chuckled. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look it's time we acknowledge that the character of scrooge mcduck is cut from the same cloth as the portrayal of colonial cultures appropriating and usurping indigenous cultures framed as a heroic and noble act and if there's going to be a sustainable and just future it has to be one where webby and lena jet around the world restoring what he had taken over the centuries and if i had the time and the proper motivation i would write a multi-chapter fic on this idea alone ty


	6. House Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: Spooky
> 
> Give Beakley a raise

“Children, we are having a meeting.” Beakley announced as soon as she opened the door to Webby’s room.

“If this is about that shipment of skulls, we filled out the customs exemption forms already,” said Lena. She sat cross-legged on Webby’s bed, a laptop in front of her. She wore one ear bud and the other dangled free, the distant sound of an echoing drone playing from it.

“The what?” said Beakley, one eyebrow arched.

“The skulls. I’d try to hide it, but we’re going to need your help to bring them up here anyway,” said Lena. “We’re going to put in some shelves, make a display. Should be a real look, you know?”

“What makes you — what kind of exemption could you _possibly_ qualify for?”

“Certificate for Medical Research!” said Webby. She sat at her desk, re-glittering her books and making a mess in the process.

“Webigail, dear, haven’t I told you how difficult it is to get that out of the carpet?” Beakley said while gesturing at the spilled arts and crafts.

“Sorry —”

“No, wait, how do you have a research exemption?”

“Well,” said Lena. “ _We_ don’t, but the Women’s Educational Bureau Bolstering Young Ladies’ Education Nationwide Alliance does.”

“We’re co-founders!” said Webby.

Beakley took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her other hand. “I turn my back for one moment… How exactly did this happen?”

“I’m not sure,” Webby said, tapping her beak thoughtfully and leaving a smudge of pink glitter on it. “Louie did most of the paperwork.”

“Of course he did.”

“He’s like, three charities and two LLCs all by himself,” said Lena. “You better keep an eye on that boy. He’s gonna make the kind of trouble that’s gonna need expensive lawyers someday.”

Beakley sighed. “ _Children_. When I was your age we got up to _sensible_ trouble. Like throwing snowballs at windows.”

“Yeah well when you were our age —”

“I rode a dinosaur to school,” Beakley said. “Yes, very clever Lena we are all impressed.”

“I was going to say that _you_ didn’t have the internet.” Lena said with a smug expression. The two briefly engaged in a stare down.

“Ha ha! That’s true!” said Webby. Lena and Beakley both blinked and stood down.

“We will set this whole conversation aside for another meeting.”

“Oof, you’re really muscling into my social calendar here, Teatime.”

“ _Right now_ I have more pressing matters to talk to you about.”

“Oh.” Webby held up her hand. “If this is about the mutant fire ant infestation, I want to say that I followed all the containment protocols. Dewey is the one who was running around the armory trying to learn how to use a boomerang.”

“I suppose you got the mutant fire ants for research purposes too,” said Beakley, sounding very tired.

Webby shook her head. “Uncle Scrooge gave me the queen. Remember when he flew out to that nuclear test site in New Mexico? Also, we don’t have an armory anymore.”

“Of course. Of course he did. Why not give children radioactive insects as pets? What is that man thinking?”

“He gave me a scorpion with three tails,” said Lena. “I took it to a taxidermist to get it preserved.”

“Where is it?” said Beakley. “Please tell me you put it in a lead container.”

Lena shrugged. “Dunno. The EPA quarantined the store before I could pick it up and now the owner won’t speak to me.”

“I suppose I should expect another visit from the government soon. Children, we can talk about that at another _other_ meeting. I came here to discuss the recent uptick in supernatural activity as of late.” 

“Oh, sure,” said Lena. “Go right to the girl who was summoned from a dimension of shadows and cavorted with known wielders of mystical powers.”

“Magic makes Huey cranky,” said Beakley. “Louie lost interest in magic after he asked a genie for, I quote, ‘a million bucks’ and it inflicted Duckburg with a massive infestation of deer.”

“So maybe Dewey did it,” said Lena.

“Dewey can’t speak a dead language,” Beakley said, directing a stern look at Webby.

“Ah… heh,” said Webby, squirming in her seat.

“It was just a little magic,” Lena said.

“The south wing of the mansion loops in on itself now. I thought you swore that kind of thing off forever.”

Lena waved her hands vaguely. “I mean, forever is a long time.”

“It hasn’t been very long.”

“’Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.’”

“Don’t quote poetry at me young lady. Not when I’m trying to keep this house from falling through a portal or some such other nonsense.”

“Oh,” said Webby, “we don’t have anything that powerful.”

“So when can I expect something that powerful to arrive in a shipment?” said Beakley.

Webby and Lena traded a look. Lena shrugged. Webby turned back to her grandmother. “14 to 20 business days? I’ve got a tracking number.”

Beakley groaned. “Where do you even get the money for this?”

“I get a little cash every now and then,” said Lena.

“From what?”

“I run a streaming radio station,” Lena said. She turned her laptop to face out. A player was running on the screen. “It’s my ‘24/7 Dark/Prog Avant Ambient Drumhorror Beats to Relax/Summon Demons to’ station.” She unplugged the ear bud jack.

The room was filled with an echoing moan, ominous chants in an indecipherable language, the ringing of distant bells and the sound of heavy footsteps on creaky wood. All to a drumbeat. Lena plugged the ear buds back in and silence fell.

“That was ghastly,” said Beakley.

“Thanks. It’s a pretty niche audience but they’re very supportive financially.”

Beakley took a deep breath. “All right. I realize that I have been lax with you of late, Webigail. You are growing up and I want to give you space to assert your own identity. But I do need you to avoid doing anything that might disturb the temporal/spatial integrity of this mansion or its surroundings. Can I ask you to do that?”

Webby nodded meekly. “Yes, Granny. I promise.”

“What are you talking to her for?” said Lena. “I’m the one who’s all spooky!”

Beakley nodded towards Lena while still maintaining eye contact with Webby. “And make sure she behaves too.”

“Yes, Granny.”

“Hey!” said Lena.

“Very well. Good night, girls.” Beakley withdrew from the room and shut the door.

“Get back here, Teatime! I’m the spooky one!” Lena called, moving to get up only to nearly drop her laptop. She scrambled to keep her grip on it and fell back onto the bed.

Webby laughed and got up from her desk. She walked over to the bed and hopped up alongside Lena.

“I’m spooky,” Lena said.

“Yes you are,” Webby said dutifully, on her hands and knees and smiling down at Lena.

“If she thinks I’ve gone soft or —”

“I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”

“Yeah. Well. If she does.”

“Lena?” said Webby.

“What?”

“Hold off on that spookiness for a little while? For me?”

Lena made a disgruntled sound.

“Granny deserves a break,” said Webby.

“ _Fine._ ”

“Thank you,” Webby said.

Lena looked up at her with a small smile. “Hey, Webby?”

“Yes?”

“You’re getting glitter all over your bedsheets.”

“Oh, I sleep with a vial of the stuff next to my pillow. So I can throw it into an intruder’s face.”

“Wow.”

“You’re spooky, I’m weird. It works out!” Webby bounced off the bed and returned to her books.

“Yeah,” said Lena. “I guess it does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm gonna be honest i kinda drew a blank on this day so i used it to experiment with a different writing style. so there you have it?


	7. Run Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When in doubt...

Looking back, it was probably inevitable that things would end up like this.

Lena wasn’t against the _concept_ , obviously. But a more low key event was more her style. Or no event at all! She wasn’t opposed to just going to an office, signing some paperwork, getting some city clerk to stamp said paperwork, then she and Webby could get back to living their awesome lives without any hitch. Aside from the one.

Or, if they had to make a big deal out of it, Lena was fully prepared to just dive into it in the tackiest way possible. A gaudy Cadillac, a whirlwind road trip to Vegas. A drive-thru window with an ordained priest dressed like Elvis leaning on the counter.

Maybe it was unrealistic to expect she could whisk Webby away like that, Lena thought as she pulled at the collar invading her neck’s personal space. Scrooge liked Webby too much to just not have a ceremony. But did it have to become such a _thing?_

Lena stood in front of a mirror in an ornate changing room and her cuffs were getting _all up_ in her wrists. It was ridiculous, the things people were expected to wear to these weddings. At least Lena didn’t have to wear the tux for very long. There was the ceremony and then they just, like, leave?

Oh wait, there will be dancing.

God. Are they going to serve cake? How many cakes? How many people were there? God. Lena felt like the suit was constricting even tighter as she thought of these terrible things. Or maybe she was breathing harder. Or maybe both. Did someone curse the tux? That could have happened. The entire family had spread out over Duckburg to organize this shindig and each member had at least one assassination or kidnapping attempt they had to navigate in the process. A wizard cursing Lena’s tux would be the very least of what could go wrong.

But no, Lena decided after a moment. She was wearing countermeasures against curses. This was just plain panic. Dropping in like an old friend. Cool.

_It’s just a few hours. That is rapidly stretching out to an entire day. I wish I had read the program. Was there a program? There had to be or there’d be no plan and it would just be a bunch of people trapped in a big room with no order and they’d all descend to chaos and cannibalism and —_

Behind her, the door slammed open.

“What are you _doing_?” said Huey.

Lena looked at him with wide eyes. “How many people out there have eaten other people?”

“None. I’ve checked the dietary needs of everyone on the guest list and there are no cannibals. But rest assured that if there _were_ guests with such a specialized diet, I would have planned for it well in advance and there’s no need to worry.”

“No, I mean, like — wait, what? You’d seriously do that?”

“Lena, we invited a vampire. It’s not even a thing to sweat. Also, yes, before you ask, the blood was legally acquired and all parties involved consented to the transaction. Now, what are you doing here? How do you become late to your own wedding while you’re still in the same building?”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. Is my jacket on straight?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ugh. Why am I even asking you, you won’t be satisfied until you bust out a ruler or something. Let’s just go!” Lena grabbed Huey by the collar, stuffed her anxiety down a deep dark mental well and covered it over with a plank of wood and a heavy rock. She walked out the door.

~~~

That mental well turned out to be a mental high-pressure geyser, and it was full on spouting as Lena stood at the altar. All her worries spilling out like an industrial accident of the worst type. Casualties high and still rising.

 _Who the hell are all these people?_ She thought. She endeavored to look without being overt about it. For important reasons, Lena was never going to contribute much to the list of guests. She had, in fact, personally created several layers of magical wards to ensure this would be the case. So beyond the immediately obvious people, everyone else was a stranger to her. Extended Duck family? Vanderquacks? It was all a question mark to her.

Though Webby was not related by blood, Scrooge had made it no secret that she’d be one of the beneficiaries of his estate. Lena was, in essence, marrying into money and she couldn’t help but see a predator’s glint or at least lurid curiosity in the eyes of many of the strangers. Sizing her up as a potential mark, an in for them to get at the McDuck fortune. Or maybe she was being paranoid. They didn’t need to be swindlers to stress her out. They could be there with nothing but good intentions and it didn’t change the fact that were there. And watching her. And waiting.

_Vegas. We should have done Vegas._

She knew it wasn’t like her to be this nervous, but she couldn’t help it. She was getting married. To Webby. And this was something that had been in the works for years. And now it was happening. And it was going to happen in front of _all these people_ and Lena was no shrinking violet but it all felt so real now. As if all the disapproving eyes and the little frowns that Lena had happily laughed at and made rude gestures at as she trampled roughshod all devil-may-care through life had suddenly come back and actually had an impact behind them. She had long ago stopped being the surly teen who had wormed her way into McDuck Manor on the sufferance of others but that was never a thing she had put much thought to.

Here and now, though, she felt this sudden expectation to perform; to be the person who deserved to stand where she was standing now. And she wasn’t feeling that at all as the eyes fell on her. She was, in fact, feeling kind of wobbly.

Then the music started and she snapped ramrod straight, eyes looking ahead and glassy. Webby was coming down the aisle.

She looked great, Lena noted in a disconnected way through blurry vision. Webby walked beside her grandmother and she wore a dress that was apparently a production all its own. Lena wasn’t quite sure why, it seemed simple enough. Maybe it was just a wedding thing. And how were these the thoughts that were going through Lena’s mind when she was standing at the altar where she was getting married?

Because this was a whole production that she didn’t even want and they could have road tripped to Vegas and maybe she was being negative or whatever but —

“Hey.”

Lena snapped out of it and looked down at Webby. “Hey,” she said automatically. Her basically wife was _right there and how did that happen so fast_.

Webby looked at her with big, sympathetic eyes and now the officiator was saying something but Lena was staring and Webby smiled and tilted her head and maybe this whole wedding thing wasn’t all bad, but it still mostly was.

“And now,” the officiator said with finality, “the exchange of vows.”

Holy shit.

Vows.

Lena knew she forgot something.

The panic, never really at bay, came crashing as a full on tsunami and the only thing that kept Lena from losing it entirely was that she was still staring at Webby and this wasn’t a romantic thing. There was a glint of determination in Webby’s eyes and Lena was starting to realize this girl was holding her in place with just a look. Webby’s willpower alone was basically keeping Lena’s legs from buckling underneath her and now she was holding both of Lena’s hands in her own and the steadiness in Webby’s grip contrasted with the shakiness in Lena’s.

“I’ll go first,” Webby whispered to her and Lena couldn’t even work the muscles she would need to nod at this. She wasn’t sure she could speak. She could still feel the eyes on her.

Webby closed her eyes and cleared her throat. Then she locked eyes with Lena again and said, with a strong voice that echoed through the interior:

“Hi! I’m Webby!”

Lena damn near lurched at this complete non sequitor and the tension inside her, which felt like an iron bar across her throat suddenly snapped like the driest, deadest twig and she felt the air explode from her lungs into a shaky laugh. Then it gained in power and she closed her eyes and it turned into a full on gale of laughter that she could no more hold back than she could the tide. She opened her eyes to look at Webby again and she had a grin on her full of mischief and kindness. For the first time since the start of the day Lena felt every muscle in her body let go and it was like she didn’t even know what it meant to actually be relaxed until that moment.

No longer heeding the eyes or the expectations or the claustrophobia, Lena freed her hands and wrapped her arms around Webby and drew her in. Webby stretched up and returned the hug.

“Careful with the bodice,” she said, whispering into Lena’s ear. “I’ve hid two daggers in the straps.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Lena whispered back.

“This whole thing sucks, doesn’t it?” said Webby.

“God. You too?”

“Of course! You think I wanted to have a ceremony in a stuffy building in front of a bunch of old people?”

“I was thinking we elope to Vegas.”

“Not bad. I was thinking Paris. The Catacombs. I know a guy who could make that happen.”

“That is such a good idea,” said Lena. “We should have done that.”

“I’ve got a car outside and we can get our hands on a private jet,” said Webby.

“Is that okay?” Lena said.

“We gave the old folks what they wanted. And there’s cake to keep them occupied.”

Lena and Webby unwrapped themselves from each other. Lena looked at Webby, saw the deadly earnestness and the wild glint of mayhem in the way Webby returned her look. Then Lena tugged off her jacket and draped it over the officiator, who mumbled through the fabric.

“We’re outta here, suckers!” she said and scooped Webby up in her arms.

“Thank you for the lovely ceremony!” Webby called out as she was carried in a rush down the aisle.

From the corner of her eye, Lena saw Scrooge and Beakley with their indulgent smiles as the rest of the guests stirred in confusion. The triplets were alternately waving, rolling their eyes or grinning. Lena angled Webby towards the doors and Webby kicked them open with force and they were out of the garish light and plunged into the soft twilight. There was some tricky negotiating on how to work the car doors, but soon there was the rev of an engine.

And then the two sped away. As Lena sprawled in the passenger seat she looked over at Webby, who was leaning into the steering wheel like a horse rider urging her steed across windswept plains. She charged headlong through the night, headlights carving the path and with windows down she whooped and her dress fluttered elegant and dangerous and there was a look in her eyes that reveled in the freedom of the moment. And all Lena could do was smile.

Looking back, it was probably inevitable that things would end up like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when in doubt end it with a wedding.
> 
> thanks to everyone for reading all these goddamn words! and thanks to secretsoup for organizing this weblena event! i thoroughly enjoyed writing these and i wouldn't have otherwise.


End file.
